上野　 洋¹, 横田 慶之¹, 宝田 明¹, 三木 隆¹, 薄木 成一郎¹, 竹内 陽史郎¹, 川合 宏哉¹, 河島 哲也¹, 伊藤 宏², 横山 光宏¹

Hiroshi UENO¹, Yoshiyuki YOKOTA¹, Akira TAKARADA¹, Takashi MIKI¹, Seiichiro USUKI¹, Yoshio TAKEUCHI¹, Hiroya KAWAI¹, Tetsuya KAWASHIMA¹, Hiroshi ITOH², Mitsuhiro YOKOYAMA¹

¹神戸大学医学部第一内科, ²神戸大学医学部第一病理

¹The First Department of Internal Medicine, Kobe University School of Medicine, ²The First Department of Pathology, Kobe University School of Medicine

キーワード : Autopsied heart, LV wall thickness, Echocardiography, Compact zone, Trabeculae

To evaluate the reliability of the left ventricular (LV) wall thickness by echocardiography, twenty four autopsied hearts were echocardiographically and pathologically investigated: Nine with concentric hypertrophic heart diseases, ten with dilated heart diseases, and five with normal hearts. The autopsied hearts were fixed and hand-sectioned along a transverse plane into 1 cm-thick sections and placed in a water filled tank. B-mode echocardiographic images were evaluated at the papillary muscle level by using a TOSHIBA SSH 160 A instrument with a 3.75 MHz transducer. Echocardiographic regional wall thicknesses [E · WT] of the interventricular septum and the LV posterior wall were compared with pathological wall thicknesses at corresponding portions: compact zone thickness [P(C)] and the sum of the compact zone and trabeculae [P(C+TR)]. E · WT was significantly correlated with P(C) and P(C+TR), but there were some variations. In many cases E · WT was closer to [P(C+TR)] because well developed trabeculae were closely adjacent to each other in the LV cavities. But in some cases of the LV dilatation, trabeculae can be distinguished from compact zone in the large LV cavities, so E · WT was closer to P(C). Generally the values of E · WT were more consistent with P(C+TR) than P(C). The difference beween E · WT and P(C) [=E · WT-P(C)] was significantly correlated with P(TR). These results suggested that echocardiography evaluated the sum of the compact zone and trabeculae thickness rather than compact zone alone as left ventricular wall thickness.