Left ventricular dysfunction in patients with interstitial lung diseases

Abstract

To the Editors: The paper by Papadopoulos et al. 1 describes the failure of systolic left ventricular (LV) function in patients with idiopathic lung fibrosis (IPF). Not much is known about LV systolic and diastolic function failure in IPF patients or its influence on rates of survival. In 1998, Vizza et al. 2 examined a large group of patients with advanced lung diseases and estimated that 6% of them had LV failure, in particular patients with primary pulmonary hypertension and Eisenmenger's syndrome. However, in a patient group with interstitial lung diseases (ILD) the proportion was lower and reached 3.6%. In 2007, we studied LV systolic function in 18 patients with lung fibrosis and heavy respiratory insufficiency 3. The patients fulfilled the American Thoracic Society (ATS)/European Respiratory …