Echocardiographic assessment of left ventricular diastolic function in a normal population and a group of patients with myocardial hypertrophy

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In order to study left ventricular diastolic function, digitized M‐mode echocardiograms of the free wall endocardium were analyzed. A population of 117 healthy individuals was compared with a group of 22 patients with myocardial hypertrophy due to aortic stenosis (AS), and a group of 21 with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCMP). The time constant Te of endocardial retraction in normals (66±13 ms) differed significantly from Te in the patients (AS, 105±23 ms, p‐1) did not differ between normals and patients (AS, 7.0±2.3 s‐1; HCMP, 7.3±2.4 s‐1). Fractional shortening (FS) of the internal diameter, a parameter of left ventricular systolic function, tended to be higher in the AS patients than in the normal group, but was on the average significantly increased in the group of HCMP. However, most patients in the hypertrophic groups had FS within normal limits ±2 SD. The discrepancy between normal or supernormal systolic function and a pathological prolonged time constant Te in myocardial hypertrophy demonstrates the importance of diastolic parameters in left ventricular characterization. Te is a useful parameter of left ventricular diastolic function which can be provided noninvasively from echocardiographic M‐mode curves of the free wall endocardium.