Background
Age‐related changes to left ventricular (LV) early diastolic recoil confound the diagnostic value of e′ velocity in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Systolic–diastolic coupling quantifies passive left ventricular elastic recoil and may be superior to e′ in differentiating abnormal diastolic recoil in HFpEF from healthy aging. This study aims to determine the effect of healthy aging and HFpEF on systolic–diastolic coupling.
Methods
Healthy adults (n = 141, aged 20‐90 years) underwent right heart catheterization (RHC) to quantify LV filling pressure and tissue Doppler echocardiography to define peak velocities and excursion (velocity time integral) of the mitral annulus. Separately, HFpEF patients (n = 12, age 67 ± 5 years) and controls (n = 12, age 68 ± 5 years) underwent RHC and echocardiography. Systolic–diastolic coupling was measured as early diastolic excursion (EDexc) divided by systolic excursion (Sexc).
Results
In healthy adults, EDexc/ Sexc declined by 15% per decade of life (r2 = 0.53, P < .001). EDexc/Sexc was significantly lower in HFpEF compared with controls (0.43 ± 0.11 vs 0.56 ± 0.11, P = .011), while e′ was similar (6.2 ± 1.5 vs 6.8 ± 1.3 cm/s, P = .33). Using ROC analysis, EDexc/Sexc had an AUC to detect HFpEF of 0.82 (0.61‐0.95, P = .007), which was superior to e′ alone (AUC 0.60(0.39‐0.80), P = .39; P = .026 for difference).
Conclusions
Systolic–diastolic coupling, quantified by the EDexc/Sexc ratio, declined linearly with healthy aging. The EDexc/Sexc ratio was further reduced in HFpEF and able to predict HFpEF more accurately than e′ alone. Systolic–diastolic coupling may be a useful diagnostic tool to detect HFpEF.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri bution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.