Early Diagnosis of Right Ventricular Systolic Dysfunction by Tissue Doppler‐Derived Isovolumic Myocardial Acceleration in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Abstract

The aim of the study was to assess validity of tissue Doppler imaging (TDI)-derived right ventricular (RV) myocardial systolic velocities in early detection of RV systolic dysfunction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Ninety COPD patients (50 pure COPD and 40 with right heart failure [RHF]) and 40 controls were enrolled. Respiratory function tests, conventional echocardiographic parameters, and TDI-derived isovolumic myocardial acceleration (IVA), peak myocardial velocity during isovolumic contraction (IVV), peak velocity during systolic ejection (Sa) were measured. All the TDI-derived RV systolic velocities were impaired in COPD (P = 0.0001) compared to controls. IVA was the only parameter that could distinguish the patients with pure COPD and COPD with RHF (P = 0.0001). IVA was found to be significantly correlated with FEV1 (r = 0.41, P = 0.0001), FEV1/FVC (r = 0.43, P = 0.0001), pulmonary artery pressure (r =-0.34, P = 0.001), pulmonary flow acceleration time (r = 0.48, P = 0.0001), and tricuspid annular systolic excursion (r =-0.41, P = 0.0001). In addition, IVA < or = 2.7 m/sec(2) was able to predict COPD patients from controls with 81% sensitivity, 98% specificity and IVA < or = 1.9 m/sec(2) predicted COPD patients accompanied by RHF with 82% sensitivity, 77% specificity from patients without RHF. TDI-derived RV IVA is a novel, noninvasive echocardiographic index which may be used in the assessment of subclinical RV dysfunction in patients with COPD.