Abstract
1121
Objectives: To find an effective method to evaluate the therapeutic responses of catheter-based transplantation of stem cells after the myocardial infarction (MI).
Methods: Eleven patients suffered from chronic MI accepted catheter-based autologous transplantation of bone marrow stem cells. All patients underwent gated 201Tl rest/redistribution myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) with attenuation correction before the treatment and six months after stem cells transplantation. All patients underwent 18F-FDG PET or coincidence gamma camera at six months after stem cells transplantation within two weeks after 201Tl gated MPI. Emory Cardiac Toolbox (ECTb) quantitative software was used to calculate the infarction areas before and after stem cells transplantation to evaluate the therapeutic response. Statistical comparison the defects area detected by Thallium-201 gated-SPECT and 18F-FDG metabolism imaging were performed using the Student t-test and p <0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: There were thirteen fixed defects detected by gated rest/redistribution 201Tl MPI before the stem cells transplantation. After six months, Five defects area showed no change, 4 defects area showed reduced a little bit (<5%) and 4 defects area become small obviously (>5%) in 201Tl MPI comparison with defects area before treatment. At the same time, the 18F-FDG metabolism imaging showed that only 2 defects area no change, the other eleven defects area reduced obviously comparison with the gated 201Tl MPI recently. And among of them 3 defects area no changed in MPI reduced about 5% in 18F-FDG metabolism imaging. Three defects areas reduced less than 5% in MPI but more than 5% in metabolism imaging and other 4 defects area reduced more than 5% in MPI, reduced more than that in some extend in metabolism imaging. There was a significant difference (p>0.05) between the MPI and the metabolism in detecting the defects area after stem cell therapy. And the 18F-FDG metabolism imaging results were well correlated with the patients’ clinical conditions
Conclusions: Thallium-201 gated MPI and 18F-FDG metabolism imaging can be used to evaluate the therapeutic response of the stem cell transplantation after myocardial infarction. The 18F-FDG metabolism imaging was more sensitive to detect the therapeutic response and the results were more accurate.
- Society of Nuclear Medicine, Inc.