MethodRelation of Left Atrial Maximal Volume Measured by Real-Time 3D Echocardiography to Demographic, Clinical, and Doppler Variables
Section snippets
Methods
After approval by the institutional review board, selected healthy volunteers and consecutive out- and in-patients referred to La Sapienza University Hospital of Rome, Italy, for an elective echocardiographic study were examined. All patients gave their written informed consent. General exclusion criteria were any of atrial fibrillation, poor echocardiographic acoustic window, or moderate/severe mitral or aortic valve disease.
A cardiologist carried out a complete history and clinical
Results
The initial study population was 238 patients, 66 healthy volunteers and 172 consecutive patients referred to the echocardiography laboratory for various cardiovascular disorders. Of the latter, 14 were excluded because of suboptimal LA endocardial border definition (n = 7), frequent premature supraventricular beats (n = 5), and imaging artifacts (n = 2).
On the basis of clinical history, physical examination, and instrumental data, the 224 patients were classified into 4 subgroups of 66 healthy
Discussion
We found that clinical, demographic, and 2D Doppler echocardiographic parameters had high correlation with the presence of increased LA volume detected using RT3DE. Ageing was associated with progressive enlargement and then volume of the left atrium because of decreased LV diastolic function caused by prolonged LV relaxation and impairment of LV passive properties. This was also shown by the analysis of transmitral flow patterns, detected using pulse-wave Doppler, in which there was a
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