Emerging role of transesophageal echocardiography in severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Abstract

Pulmonary hypertension is a common complication of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Usually ABSTRACT Background: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) secondary to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has a prevalence from 20 to 91% depending on the definition of PH (mPAP >20 versus >25 mmHg). Pulmonary vasoconstriction, pulmonary vascular remodeling, endothelial dysfunction, inflammation and destruction of the pulmonary vascular bed being the common mechanisms behind. Transthoracic echocardiograms (TTE) though the most important non-invasive tool to measure degree of PH, may give false negative results in severe COPD cases due to poor echo window. This could be overcome by doing transesophageal echocardiograms (TEE) in those cases, which is, though invasive but gives good results. The aim of the study was to evaluate the role of transesophageal echocardiography in COPD patients. Methods: Total 100 patients of COPD were evaluated for PH via TTE and TEE was performed in all those 33 patients whose TTE were non-confirmatory due to poor echo window. Results: There were 0% patient with poor echo window in COPD grade 1, 18.18% in grade 2, 42.2% and 39.39% in grade 3 and grade 4 respectively. P-value obtained was statistically significant P <0.001. Out of 33 COPD patients with poor echo window, In grade 3 and grade 4, 64.2% and 76.9% patients had TEE findings respectively while in grade1 and grade 2 0% and 33.33% patient had TEE finding. Conclusions: TTE though is an excellent tool for diagnosing pulmonary artery hypertension in COPD patients, has its limitation especially in severe COPD cases due to poor echo window which may give false negative results. So TEE should be recommended in all those severe COPD cases that have poor echo window.

Management of cardiovascular comorbidities in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients

“…On the other hand, the diagnosis of HF in COPD presents the same difficulties due to the commonality of risk factors and similar clinical manifestations (84,86,87). Reduced EF is the main criteria for the diagnosis of HF in COPD patients indicated in the literature (88).…”