الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Despite the clinical observation of right ventricular (RV) infarction almost 80 years ago, this condition had received little clinical attention until recent years. Non-invasive studies suggest the presence of RV ischaemic dysfunction in about 50% of patients with acute inferior MI and 10% of patients with anterior MI, whereas isolated RV infarction is rare, accounting for <3% of all cases of fatal infarction.
In a clinical setting, however, RVI is detected less often, although early and accurate detection of RVI might be necessary to identify patients at increased risk for complications and in-hospital mortality.
Radionuclide angiography was previously considered the gold standard (next to autopsy) for detection of haemodynamically significant RV dysfunction, but has now been superseded by cardiac MRI which is now considered the most accurate and reproducible noninvasive diagnostic tool for RV evaluation.
Although cardiac magnetic resonance imaging allows the accurate evaluation of RV, these studies are costly, and centers with the expertise required to acquire and interpret the data are few. On the other hand, the echocardiography is less accurate but simple and readily available method for RV evaluation.
Our study was designed to assess the role of late enhancement cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging for diagnosis of right ventricular myocardial infarction in comparison to 2D echocardiography in patients with recent inferior STEMI.
In our study, we prospectively enrolled 20 patients with acute inferior STEMI irrespective of presence or absence of RVI. All patients were subjected to history taking, clinical examination, 14 leads ECG (standard 12 leads ECG+2 right precordial leads [V3r, V4r]), transthoracic echocardiography (using M-mode, two-dimensional, Doppler and tissue Doppler imaging) and CMR (cine images to assess regional wall motion abnormalities and late gadolinium enhanced MRI to assess myocardial viability).