Copyright © 2007, The European Society of Cardiology
Core lab, no core lab or automated LVEF?
Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Room 9017 East Gates Pavilion, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Received 6 March 2007; .
suttonm@mail.med.upenn.edu
* Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +1 215 349 8190.
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Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) is an important tool that enables early risk stratification, and predicts late clinical outcome in a variety of cardiac diseases. In contemporary cardiology practice LVEF is also critically important in clinical decision-making; for example in determining who receives an internal automatic defibrillator, biventricular pacing, or epicardial restraint devices in patients with heart failure. In addition, LVEF is the gate-keeper with regards access to clinical trials for novel pharmacologic and device therapies. Thus, it is of pivotal importance that LVEF be estimated accurately and reproducibly.
LVEF can be assessed by cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR), cardiac computed tomography (CT), nuclear scintigraphy and real-time 3D echocardiography, but in clinical practice,