Histopathological study of specimens obtained by left ventricular biopsy during ventriculoplasty for idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy.

OBJECTIVE: Pathological changes in the myocardium in idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) are usually studied using endomyocardial biopsy specimens, but the relationship between pathological changes in the myocardium and clinical findings is unclear. The goal of the study was to examine correlations between clinical findings and histopathological findings in specimens of the left ventricular myocardium collected during left ventriculoplasty in DCM patients. METHODS: The subjects were 20 DCM patients (17 males and 3 females; mean age: 59 ± 14 years old) who underwent left ventriculoplasty, including 16 cases of overlapping ventriculoplasty (OLVP) and 4 of papillary muscle approximation (PMA) with left ventricular incision. Preoperative age, sex, The New York Heart Association (NYHA) classification, the brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) level, cardiothoracic ratio (CTR), echocardiographic data, history of diabetes mellitus, drug history of spironolactone, ACE inhibitor, ARB, and β-blocker were used as clinical findings. Histopathological scores were determined for each patient and semi-quantitative data for hypertrophy, attenuation, vacuolation and fibrosis were obtained. RESULTS: A significant correlation was found between age and interstitial fibrosis. A significant inverse correlation was found between left ventricular diastolic diameter (LVDd) in echocardiographic data and interstitial fibrosis. There were no other significant relation between histopathological scores and clinical findings. CONCLUSION: From this study, we found that interstitial fibrous increased with aging and more dilated LVDd had less interstitial fibrosis. It is concluded that the kinetics of myocardial fibrosis with remodeling might be variable and histopathological findings does not reflect the clinical and hemodynamic changes in DCM patients. Further morphological data are needed to verify this result.