The accurate assessment of the extent and severity of stress-induced wall motion abnormalities is often difficult, and wall motion abnormalities may be missed by visual inspection of wall motion from the standard two-dimensional views.
Wall motion abnormalities were visually detected in six individuals (4.3%), while in one case, the examination was judged not to be diagnostic.
Wall motion abnormalities were graded visually with the aid of cinematic display of gated images according to five scores (0 =normal motion, 1 =mildly or moderately decreased motion, 2 =severely decreased motion, 3 =akinesis, and 4 =dyskinesis).
The reason for this noncoronary distribution of the segmental wall motion abnormalities was unknown and often related to differences in myocardial autonomic innervation and adrenergic stimulation [2, 3, 18].
Although the visual detection of regional wall motion abnormalities is defined as a basic competence in critical care echocardiography, no previous study in ICU setting has validated the level of training required for its acquisition.
Wall motion abnormalities were visually analysed and summarised in a wall motion score [ 18].
For determination of infarct size regional LV wall motion abnormalities were quantitated as described previously [ 16].
The presence of LV and RV wall motion abnormalities was assessed.
