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The survival, clinical and echocardiographic variables and the predictors of cardiovascular death were determined for a group of 168 patients (mean age 63 ± 13 years; 65 females; mean left ventricular ejection fraction 32 ± 10%) with restrictive filling of the left ventricle and depressed systolic function after a mean follow-up period of 2.7 ± 1 years. Shorter deceleration time (DT) of the mitral inflow was the only variable significantly different between survivors and nonsurvivors (p < 0.05) and the only predictor of death found by multivariate logistic regression analysis (odds ratio 2.2, 95% confidence interval 1.7–3.6). In this patient population, a DT of the early wave of the mitral inflow <140 ms identified the patients with the highest risk of cardiac death. DT is a practical echocardiographic parameter for risk stratification of patients with significant left ventricular systolic dysfunction and restrictive filling of the left ventricle.

From an echocardiographic laboratory database, echocardiographic characteristics of clinical and cardiovascular mortality were compared in patients with restrictive pattern of left ventricular filling (RPLVF) and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) >50% (n = 36), with patients with RPLVF and LVEF <50% (n = 120) and echocardiographic controls (n = 160). Preserved LVEF was found in 21% of the patients with RPLVF. Mortality in patients with RPLVF was worst compared with echocardiographic controls regardless of their underlying LVEF after 2.7 ± 1 years of follow-up. Patients with RPLVF had distinctive predictors of cardiovascular death, with clinical and echocardiographic characteristics according to their LVEF.

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