Post-exercise potentiation of wall motion to identify myocardial viability.

Resting left ventricular wall motion abnormalities may represent myocardial scars or areas of viable muscle which are ischemic and may thus benefit from revascularization surgery. Improvement in wall motion in the 3-6 minute post-exercise recovery period as compared to the resting state was investigated as a possible criterion to predict myocardial viability in 168 patients with coronary artery disease. Of 125 patients with abnormal resting wall motion, 14 of 14 who improved regional function post-exercise also improved following coronary bypass surgery. However, wall motion improved postoperatively in an additional 55 patients who had not demonstrated post-exercise improvement. An increase in ejection fraction post-exercise occurred in patients with coronary disease as well as an additional group of 24 normal subjects. Thus in the post-exercise period, improvement in resting wall motion is a highly specific but insensitive predictor of myocardial viability.