Iodine-123 metaiodobenzylguanidine myocardial scintigraphy for prediction of response to β-blocker therapy in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy

This study was performed to evaluate whether iodine-123 metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) myocardial scintigraphy could predict the response to β-blocker therapy in patients with nonischemic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). β-Blocker therapy is effective in some patients with DCM. MIBG myocardial scintigraphy has also been suggested to be useful in evaluating the severity of myocardial damage in DCM. However, no data exist on whether MIBG imaging can be used to predict which patients with DCM will respond to β-blocker therapy. We prospectively evaluated whether MIBG myocardial imaging was useful in predicting responses to β-blocker therapy in patients with DCM. MIBG imaging was performed in 45 patients with DCM (35 men, 10 women, aged 13 to 68 years) before the start of bisoprolol. The heart to mediastinum (H/M) MIBG uptake ratio was evaluated on initial and delayed images, and the percent washout rate of myocardial MIBG was also obtained from these data. Of the 45 patients, 30 (67%) responded to β-blocker therapy, whereas 2 were resistant and 13 showed progression of heart failure or died of heart failure. By logistic regression analysis, the H/M uptake ratio on delayed images was seen to be a good predictor of the response to β-blocker therapy with a threshold of 1.7 (sensitivity = 91%, specificity = 92%, accuracy = 91%, positive and negative predictive value = 97% and 80%, respectively). These results indicate that an H/M ratio >1.7 on the delayed MIBG myocardial scintigraphic images provides a useful indication of whether patients with DCM will respond to β-blocker therapy. (Am Heart J 1997;133:353-8.)