Pericardial Fat Overlaying the Left Ventricle: A Better Indicator of Left Ventricular Function

Ning Hua¹, Zhongjing Chen¹, Sherman Bigornia¹, Alkystis Phinikaridou¹, Ye Qiao¹, Caroline Apovian¹, Hernan Jara¹, Frederick Ruberg¹, James Hamilton¹

We imaged 40 metabolic syndrome (MetS) subjects as well as 17 healthy controls using MRI to determine if left ventricular (LV) function would be better correlated with LV fat instead of total pericardial fat. We found that in MetS subjects, stroke volume, cardiac output(CO), wall mass, end-diastolic volume and early filling (E) rate were inversely related to LV fat but not RV fat. The total pericardial fat was only correlated with CO and E-rate. This study suggests that LV pericardial fat rather than total pericardial fat might better correlate to LV function, the mechanism of which remains to be defined.