The Independent Prognostic Value of Contractile and Coronary Flow Reserve Determined by Dipyridamole Stress Echocardiography in Patients With Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy

The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of Doppler echocardiographically derived coronary flow reserve (CFR) in assessing inotropic response in patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDC). One hundred thirty-two patients with IDC (90 men; mean age 62 ± 11 years) were evaluated by transthoracic dipyridamole (0.84 mg/kg in 10 minutes) stress echocardiography. All patients had ejection fractions 0.25. All patients were followed for a median of 24 months. Mean CFR was 2.0 ± 0.5. On individual patient analysis, 48 patients had normal CFR (>2), and 84 had abnormal CFR. The mean wall motion score index at rest was 2.0 ± 0.33 and decreased to 1.8 ± 0.4 at peak dipyridamole dose (p