Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Aug 26, 2016; 8(8): 472-480
Published online Aug 26, 2016. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v8.i8.472
Noninvasive model including right ventricular speckle tracking for the evaluation of pulmonary hypertension
Yossra Mahran, Robert Schueler, Marcel Weber, Carmen Pizarro, Georg Nickenig, Dirk Skowasch, Christoph Hammerstingl
Yossra Mahran, Robert Schueler, Marcel Weber, Carmen Pizarro, Georg Nickenig, Dirk Skowasch, Christoph Hammerstingl, Department of Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Pneumology and Angiology, Heart Centre Bonn, University of Bonn, 53105 Bonn, Germany
Author contributions: Mahran Y was responsible for drafting the manuscript and interpreted the data; Schueler R was responsible for the study design and initiation as well as for statistical evaluation; Weber M, Pizarro C and Nickenig G were responsible for statistical interpretation and conception; Skowasch D and Hammerstingl C were responsible for statistical interpretation and conception of the analysis, furthermore they were mainly responsible for critically revising the manuscript and suggested much of its design; Mahran Y and Schueler R contributed equally to this manuscript; Skowasch D and Hammerstingl C contributed equally to this manuscript.
Supported by An unrestricted grant of Actelion Pharmaceuticals Deutschland GmbH.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the ethical committee of the University of Bonn.
Informed consent statement: All involved persons (subjects or legally authorized representative) gave their written informed consent prior to study inclusion.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Dirk Skowasch, Professor, MED, Department of Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Pneumology and Angiology, Heart Centre Bonn, University of Bonn, Sigmund-Freud-Str.25, 53105 Bonn, Germany. dirk.skowasch@ukb.uni-bonn.de
Telephone: +49-228-28716670 Fax: +49-228-28719010
Received: March 21, 2016
Peer-review started: March 22, 2016
First decision: April 20, 2016
Revised: April 29, 2016
Accepted: July 11, 2016
Article in press: July 13, 2016
Published online: August 26, 2016
Processing time: 156 Days and 19.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: We investigated the value of speckle-tracking (ST) analysis of the right ventricle (RV) in patients with suspected pulmonary hypertension. It focuses on a non-invasive model including parameters derived from standard transthorathic echocardiography (TTE) and ST, as well as electrocardiogram (ECG), six minutes walking distance and NT-pro BNP in order to distinguish the precapillary and postcapillary forms of PH. ST-derived apical RV longitudinal strain (RVAS < -6.5%), TTE-derived systolic pulmonary artery pressure (sPAP > 33 mmHg) and ECG RV stress signs were associated with precapillary PH, their combination had a sensitivity of 82.8% and a specificity of 17.2% for the detection of precapillary PH.