Right ventricle strain analysis can aid specific heart failure patients
In patients with acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF), right ventricular (RV) strain analysis can provide additional support to traditional risk assessment methods, wrote authors of a new Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging study.
As a part of the research, corresponding author Yoshihiro Seo, MD, PhD and colleagues analyzed 618 patients who were consecutively hospitalized with ADHF. Patients who demonstrated an average 46 percent ejection fraction underwent clinical and echocardiographic evaluation before discharge.
After performing strain analyses of left ventricle (LV) global longitudinal strain and LV global circumferential strain the researchers looked at RV longitudinal strain from the free wall (RV-fwLS) taken from all segments of the longitudinal strain wall. They found RV-fwLS was associated with a 1.5-fold increased risk of cardiac event.
“Among left ventricular and RV strain parameters, only RV-fwLS has an incremental value to identify the ADHF patients at high risk after discharge,” the authors wrote. “Therefore, ADHF patients with impaired RV-fwLS at discharge should require close outpatient follow-up and more aggressive medical treatment to avoid cardiovascular events.”
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Matt joined Chicago’s TriMed team in 2018 covering all areas of health imaging after two years reporting on the hospital field. He holds a bachelor’s in English from UIC, and enjoys a good cup of coffee and an interesting documentary.