Echocardiogram vs. MUGA

[Mark Frost]

A year and a half ago, I was diagnosed with dilated cardiomiopathy after an echocardiogram.  It showed my EF to be 25%.  My cardiologist followed up with a MUGA scan which showed the EF to be 49%.  Recently, I had a stress echo test.  On it, my pre-exercise EF was 30% and my post-excercise EF was 35%.  Again, my cardiologist followed up with a MUGA, which said my EF was 59%.  Why such a difference and which is more likely to be correct?

[Dr_Omar]

A related discussion, Different values of LVEF on echocardiogram and MUGA was started.

[Penny To All Above]

This may be a strange question but does anyone out there know if EF can be too high?  My echo report says that mine is 80% which seems abnormally high if the norm is 50-60.

[CCF CARDIO MD - DLB]

The echo and MUGA are completely different ways of imaging the heart and usually give numbers for the EF that are different from one another, though usually not by as much as in your case. These differences can be due to technical factors associated with the tests, or to associated abnormalities such as valve leakage (mitral regurgitation). The way I would interpret the tests is that your heart function has improved somewhat, though it is still moderately abnormal.