The Use of Nuclear Imaging to Assess the Myocardial Viability

Terms commonly used to describe different myocardial states are ‘‘viable’’, ‘‘stunned’’, ‘‘hibernating’’, ‘‘infarcted’’, and ‘‘scarred’’. Common problems are to equate infarcted myocardium with irrecoverable dysfunction, making no allowance for partial-thickness infarction, and to equate viable myocardiumwith hibernation. It is particularly important to distinguish between viable and hibernating myocardium since the presence of viable myocardium does not per se imply recovery of function after revascularization.