[Gd-DTPA in magnetic resonance diagnosis of chronic myocardial infarct]

Abstract

30 patients with myocardial infarction older than three weeks were examined by MRI prior and following intravenous injection of 0.1-0.2 mmol/kg Gd-DTPA, 201TL-SPECT and cineventriculography. Gd-DTPA did not cause any significant change (p less than 0.05) of T2-values for infarcted or non-infarcted myocardium. Compared with this, signal intensity for T1-weighted images increased after the application of the contrast agent both for normal (26 +/- 14%) and infarcted myocardium (33 +/- 16%). The intraindividual signal intensity ratio for infarcted and normal myocardium increased from 1.06 +/- 0.07 to 1.12 +/- 0.09 after the injection of Gd-DTPA. The diagnosis of myocardial infarction by visual analysis of signal intensity was not possible in individual cases. Myocardial infarction could only be visualized indirectly by morphological changes such as wall thinning and aneurysm.