SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging for the evaluation of left ventricular mechanical dyssynchrony in obese patients

Objective Left ventricular dyssynchrony (LVD), the loss of coordinated contraction in the left ventricle, is an early sign of heart failure. LVD can be assessed using phase analysis techniques with gated single‐photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI). This study aimed to investigate the impact of obesity on LVD through phase analysis. Methods We retrospectively enrolled 152 obese patients and 80 age‐ and sex‐matched nonobese patients who showed normal myocardial perfusion and normal left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) on MPI. Phase standard deviation (PSD) and phase histogram bandwidth (PBW), as phase analysis parameters, were compared between patients with and without obesity. Results Although PSD values were within the normal range (cut‐off value >23) for both groups, the PSD values of obese patients were higher than those of the nonobese (20.49 ± 8.66 vs. 14.81 ± 4.93; p