Objectives
Behçet’s Disease (BD) is a unique systemic vasculitis mainly involving veins in contrast to other vasculitides. Prior studies showed that pulmonary arteries (PA) have a similar structure to systemic veins. In this study, we aimed to assess PA wall thickness by transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) in BD patients compared with healthy controls (HC) and patients with non-inflammatory pulmonary embolism (NIPE).
Methods
Patients with BD (n = 77), NIPE (n = 33) and HC (n = 57) were studied. PA wall thickness was measured from the mid-portion of the main PA with TTE by two cardiologists blinded to cases.
Results
PA wall thickness was significantly lower in HC (3.6 (0.3) mm) compared with NIPE (4.4 (0.5) mm) and BD (4.4 (0.6) mm) (p< 0.001 for both). PA wall thickness was similar between BD and NIPE (p= 0.6). Among patients with BD, PA wall thickness was significantly higher in patients with major organ involvement compared with mucocutaneous limited disease (4.7 (0.4) mm vs 3.7 (0.4) mm, p< 0.001), HC and NIPE (p< 0.001 and p= 0.006, respectively). PA wall thickness was comparable between patients with vascular and non-vascular major organ involvement (4.6 (0.5) mm vs 4.7 (0.3) mm, p= 0.3).
Conclusion
We observed that PA wall thickness was significantly higher in BD with major organ involvement compared with patients with only mucocutaneous limited disease, HC and NIPE. These results suggest that increased PA wall thickness may be a sign of severe disease with major organ involvement in BD.