Relation of right ventricular dysfunction to the severity of hepatic cirrhosis by different echo modalities using speckle-tracking echocardiography

Abstract

Background Speckle-tracking echocardiographic (STE) studies have shown the presence of right ventricular (RV) dysfunction before the advent of RV failure in patients with hepatic cirrhosis. We aimed to evaluate RV function in patients with hepatic cirrhosis and assess the relation of RV dysfunction to the severity of hepatic cirrhosis using different echo-Doppler modalities including STE. Patients and methods This study included 49 patients with various degrees of hepatic cirrhosis and 34 healthy normal individuals (NL). Patients were classified into group A (11 patients), group B (17 patients), and group C (21 patients) according to disease severity using the Child–Pugh score. Conventional echo-Doppler parameters of RV function together with tissue Doppler imaging-derived RV strain and speckle-tracking echo-derived right ventricular global strain (STE-RVGST) were obtained.

Keywords

• hepatic cirrhosis
• right ventricular function
• speckle tracking echocardiography