Clinical InvestigationVentricular and Atrial MechanicsEarly Detection of Left Atrial Strain Abnormalities by Speckle-Tracking in Hypertensive and Diabetic Patients with Normal Left Atrial Size
Section snippets
Study Population
Asymptomatic patients affected by arterial hypertension and/or type 2 diabetes mellitus, consecutively enrolled in our laboratory of echocardiography between June 2009 and September 2010, were considered for this study. For inclusion in the study population, patients needed to have echocardiographic evidence of normal LA size, defined as LA volume indexed to body surface area < 28 mL/m2,25 and no symptoms of suspected cardiac origin. According to current European Society of Hypertension and
General Characteristics
In the overall study population, 14 subjects (nine patients and five controls) were excluded during offline strain analysis because of the impossibility of obtaining adequate tracking quality in more than three LA segments. Among a total of 2,292 segments analyzed in the remaining 155 patients (patients with hypertension but not diabetes, n = 83; patients with diabetes and normal blood pressure, n = 34; patients with diabetes and hypertension, n = 38) and 36 controls, adequate tracking was
Main Findings
In this study, we explored LA function by STE in patients with hypertension or diabetes and echocardiographic evidence of normal LA size. Our findings suggest that (1) LA deformation dynamics are impaired in these patients in comparison with age-matched and gender-matched controls, (2) the magnitude of this impairment is further increased in subjects with coexisting hypertension and diabetes, and (3) the association of hypertension and diabetes with LA strain abnormalities is independent of
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