Echocardiographic evalution of the left ventricular diastolic functions in rheumatoid arthritis

Background and aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate LVDF in patients with RA, analyzing conventional Doppler and tissue Doppler echocardiographic imaging (TDI) which is a new echocardiographic application.Method: Fourty-six patients with RA and 31 healthy persons were included in this study. Duration of disease ranged from 0 to 12 years (mean 4,2 ± 4,3 / years). All patients and the control group were evaluated by M-mode, two-dimensional, conventional Doppler echocardiography and TDI.Results: When compared with controls, the RA group showed that basal clinic and echocardiographic parameters, left atrial diamater, left ventriculer diamaters, left ventriculer ejection fraction, left ventricular wall thicknesses of these two groups were similar. Among conventional Doppler transvalvular mitral flow parameters, early diastolic flow velocity (E) (p = 0,001), late diastolic flow velocity (A) (p = 0,03) and deceleration time (DT) (p = < 0,001) values were higher in patients with RA than that in the control group. E/A ratio was found to be lower in patients with RA than that in the control group (p = < 0,001). Mitral annular early diastolic velocity (Em), among TDI parameters, was found to be lower in patients with RA than that in the control group (p = 0,01). Mitral annular late diastolic velocity (Am) was found to be higher in RA patients compared with that in the control group (p = 0,007).Conclusion: A comparison between age and sex of RA patients and healthy individuals revealed that left ventricular conventional Doppler and TDI parameters of RA patients were impaired.Keywords: rheumatoid arthritis, diastolic dysfunction, doppler echocardiography.