Amount of dissipative energy loss when assessing left ventricular dysfunction in female patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Left ventricular systolic function assessed by standard and advanced echocardiographic techniques in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: A systemic review and meta-analysis

Objectives

Aim of the study was to perform a systemic review and meta-analysis of the current case-control studies based on the assessment of the left ventricular (LV) systolic function with standard and advanced echocardiographic methods.

Materials and methods

Objectives of the study, methods of statisticalanalysis, literature search strategy, inclusion andexclusion criteria, and outcome measurementswere defined according to Cochrane Collaborationsteps, 13 including recommendations for metaanalysisof observational studies in epidemiology (MOOSE).

Results

A total of 850 papers were collected. Of those, eight papers (10 groups) including 174,442 SLE patients and 45,608,723 controls with heart failure (HF), 20 papers including 1,121 SLE patients and 1,010 controls with an evaluated LV ejection fraction (LVEF), and eight studies (nine groups) including 462 SLE patients and 356 controls with a measured LV global longitudinal strain (LVGLS) met the predefined inclusion criteria. HF rate in SLE patients was 2.39% (4,176 of 174,442 patients with HF), and SLE patients showed a 3.4 times higher risk for HF compared to controls. SLE patients had a lower LVEF compared to controls. LVGLS was more impaired in SLE patients compared to controls, irrespective of two-dimensional or three-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography.

Conclusion

Heart failure rate in SLE patients is high, and SLE patients showed a 3.4 times higher risk in patients with SLE compared to controls. LV systolic function, as measured by LVEF and LVGLS, is significantly affected in SLE patients, and LVGLS potentially represents a new tool for the early assessment of LV function.

Mean pulmonary artery pressure estimated by echocardiogram rapidly exceeds 20 mmHg from the normal range in patients with connective tissue disease

Earlier intervention for pulmonary hypertension (PH) has been reported to improve the prognosis of patients with connective tissue disease (CTD). However, it is not fully elucidated how rapidly PH develops in patients showing normal mean pulmonary arterial pressure (mPAP) at the index investigation. We evaluated 191 CTD patients with normal mPAP retrospectively. The mPAP was estimated by the formerly defined method employing echocardiography (mPAP^echo). We investigated predictive factors that predict increasing mPAP^echo at follow-up transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) using uni- and multi variable analysis. The mean age was 61.5 years old, and 160 patients were female. The percentage of patients in whom mPAP^echo exceeded 20 mmHg at follow-up TTE was 38%. Multivariable analysis revealed that acceleration time/ejection time (AcT/ET) measured at the right ventricular outflow tract at initial TTE was independently associated with the consequent increase of mPAP^echo at the follow-up TTE. When using 0.43 of best cutoff value in AcT/ET calculated by receiver operating characteristic analysis, the change in mPAP^echo in patients with low AcT/ET was significantly higher than in those with high AcT/ET (3.05 mmHg in patients with AcT/ET < 0.43 and 1.00 mmHg in patients with AcT/ET ≥ 0.43, p < 0.001). Thirty-eight percent of CTD patients who show the normal estimated mPAP by TTE develop gradual elevation of mPAP to the level to consider early intervention within 2 years. AcT/ET at initial TTE can predict increasing mPAP at follow-up TTE.