Effect of Enhanced External Counterpulsation on Dobutamine-Induced Left Ventricular Wall Motion Abnormalities in Severe Chronic Angina Pectoris

Abstract We studied the effect of enhanced external counterpulsation (EECP) in 23 consecutive patients with stable angina pectoris who had a positive dobutamine stress echocardiogram. After EECP, stress-induced wall motion score (WMS) improved by ≥2 grades in 43% of the patients (n = 10); the average improvement was 5.3 ± 3.8 compared with −0.6 ± 3.0 in the remaining 13 patients (p = 0.007). The diastolic/systolic augmentation ratio increased by 217% in response to the full course of EECP (p = 0.0002) among patients with improved WMS, and by 71% (p = 0.004) among the other patients; the increase was greater among patients with improved WMS than among patients with no improvement (p = 0.01). After EECP, Canadian Cardiovascular Society angina class improved from 3.1 ± 0.6 to 2.2 ± 0.7 (p