Diastolic dysfunction and elevated filling pressure have important role in heart failure. Traditional Doppler echocardiography (DE) however is of limited value in the measurement of these variables. The objective of this study was the evaluation of a new technique, the pulsed tissue Doppler echocardiography of the lateral mitral anulus (PTDI) in diastolic function. 96 consecutive patients were included into the study who were in sinus rhythm, mitral valve disease was excluded and ejection fraction was either > or = 50% (50 patients) or < or = 40% (46 patients). DE technique was used to measure mitral E, A velocity, deceleration time (DT). Myocardial early diastolic (Ea), late diastolic (Aa) velocities were measured at the lateral mitral anulus by PTDI, and E/A, Ea/Aa, E/Ea ratios were calculated. Based on accepted DE criteria of diastolic dysfunction there were 19 normal subjects, 18 patients had abnormal relaxation, 8 had pseudonormalization pattern and 12 had restrictive dysfunction, the rest of patients did not fulfill these criteria.
Results: PDTI indicated an association of diastolic dysfunction to systolic dysfunction, which could not be shown by DE. Myocardial Ea velocity was age-dependent only in patients with good systolic function, and it was less than 15 cm/s in all types of diastolic dysfunction. E/Ea ratio over 8 indicated elevated filling pressure, but it was related to E/A ratio only in cases of good systolic function. Importantly one third of cases could be classified into diastolic dysfunction patterns only using tissue Doppler.
Conclusions: Myocardial diastolic velocities can be easily measured by pulsed tissue Doppler technique at the lateral mitral anulus. Decreased early diastolic tissue velocity indicates diastolic dysfunction independently of its type, and it is generally associated to systolic dysfunction, independently of age. Pseudonormalization is defined as the combination of normal mitral inflow and decreased tissue diastolic velocity.