Study of Left Ventricular Geometry and Function by B-Scan Ultrasonography in Patients with and without Asynergy

To assess the usefulness of B-scan ultrasonography in determining left ventricular geometry and function, 25 patients with various cardiac disorders were studied with B-scan imaging within 24 hours of performance of biplane cine angiography of the left ventricle. In 14 patients asynergy present on the left anterior oblique ventriculogram was also detected on the B-scan image. A good correlation was found between the area ejection fractions as determined from the B-scan and the ventriculographic silhouettes (r = 0.92). A good correlation was also found between the B-scan area ejection fraction and the biplane volume ejection fraction (r = 0.87), even in patients with left ventricular asynergy, in whom the quantification of left ventricular geometry and function by standard time-motion echocardiography may be inaccurate. Thus, B-scan ultrasonography appears to be a safe, noninvasive, easily repeated technic for the study of left ventricular geometry, ejection and segmental motion in patients with various forms of heart disease. (N Engl J Med 291:1220–1226, 1974)