Prediction of improvement in cardiac function by high dose dobutamine stress echocardiography in patients with recent onset idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy

摘要

The prognosis of patients with recent onset idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is grave and highly variable [1]. Dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) has been used to assess contractile reserve in patients with ischemic and idiopathic DCM. Several studies have suggested that contractile reserve assessed by DSE can be of prognostic value in patients with idiopathic DCM [2-5]. In this study, we investigated whether contractile reserve on DSE could predict late improvement of cardiac function and had incremental prognostic value for future cardiac events in recent onset idiopathic DCM.