The Evaluation of Left Ventricular Function by Invasive and Noninvasive Methods

Noninvasive methods in cardiology have progressed very rapidly in recent years. Cardiac catheterization and angiocardiography are the standard methods for evaluating of cardiac performance, however, they need expensive apparatus and are time-consuming, arduous procedure which do not permit to repeat frequently, and sometimes risky. In this article, the indices of pump and muscle function of the heart obtained by invasive methods were compared to those indices obtained by noninvasive methods, and correlation between two groups and usefullness and limitation were discussed. Systolic time interval are convenient and repeatable measure of left ventricular performance in clinical cardiology. There are significant correlation of PEP/LVET with stroke volume, ejection fraction and mean circumferential shortening velocity. Although some limitation are present in application of this method to certain disease, these measures are useful in the evaluation of left ventricular performance. Echocardiography has made an era of the noninvasive cardiology. Left ventricular volume, ejection fraction, mean circumferential shortening velocity and PSP/ESVI are accurately calculated by echocardiographic measurement. Nuclear cardiology is also accurate noninvasive method in evaluation of cardiac performance. With this tremendous growth in this field, it will make next era of noninvasive cardiology.