The Accuracy of Left Ventricular Mass Determined by Real-time Three-dimensional Echocardiography in Chronic Animal and Clinical Studies: A Comparison with Postmortem Examination and Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography (RT3DE), 2-dimensional echocardiography (2DE), and M-mode echocardiography were performed in 28 sheep with cardiac pathologies and 27 patients with heart disease to demonstrate the superiority of RT3DE over M-mode and 2DE for the determination of left ventricular mass. Postmortem examination and magnetic resonance imaging were used as a reference standard for the animal and clinical studies, respectively. In the animal study, the highest concordance correlation (0.92) was obtained between the actual weight of left ventricular mass and that estimated by RT3DE (0.69 for 2DE and 0.77 for M-mode, P < .001). In the clinical study, RT3DE also provided the best concordance correlation with left ventricular mass determined by magnetic resonance imaging (0.91 for RT3DE, 0.83 for 2DE, and 0.38 for M-mode; P < .0001).