Elsevier

American Heart Journal

Volume 150, Issue 2, August 2005, Pages 294-301
American Heart Journal

Clinical Investigation
Valvular and Congenital Heart Disease
Regional myocardial velocities and isovolumic contraction acceleration before and after device closure of atrial septal defects: A color tissue Doppler study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ahj.2004.09.052Get rights and content

Background

The study analyzed the effect of atrial septal defect (ASD) device closure on regional wall motion in the right (RV) and left ventricles (LV) using color tissue Doppler imaging (TDI). Atrial septal defect closure results in acute volume unloading of the RV. For unknown reasons, some patients develop acute left-sided heart failure postintervention.

Methods

Color TDI was performed in 39 pediatric ASD and 75 age-matched controls. Regional wall motion in 5 LV and 1 RV segment were analyzed before, immediately after, and 24 hours after interventional ASD closure. Off-line postprocessing of echocardiographic data was used to determine myocardial velocities and acceleration during isovolumic contraction (IVA). Isovolumic contraction acceleration is the slope of the upstroke of the isovolumic contraction wave (IVA = peak velocity/acceleration time).

Results

At baseline, patients with ASD had significantly higher RV systolic velocities than controls. Isovolumic contraction acceleration was similar in patients with ASD and controls. In the catheterization laboratory postintervention, conventional function parameters remained stable but systolic myocardial velocities decreased significantly in all segments. Diastolic velocities fell in LV segments but not in the RV. In contrast to velocities, IVA was stable during ASD device closure. On follow-up at 24 hours, myocardial velocities had normalized.

Conclusions

Device closure of ASD results to an acute transient decrease of regional myocardial velocities in the LV and RV, whereas the load-insensitive marker isovolumic acceleration remained stable. Therefore, the velocity changes may represent a response to altered left and right ventricular loading conditions. Color TDI is a sensitive tool to analyze ventricular mechanics.

Section snippets

Methods

The study design was to enroll consecutive patients younger than 21 years who underwent successful device closure of an atrial communication (ASD) at The Children's Hospital (Denver, Colo). The 39 pediatric patients all had secundum-type ASDs. The research protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board. Informed consent and assent were obtained.

Clinical patient characteristics

The clinical characteristics of the 39 patients are summarized in Table I. Patients had a median age of 8 years with a range from 1.1 to 19 years. All children had a hemodynamically significant secundum-type ASD with at least mild right ventricular dilatation. The age-matched control group consisted of 75 healthy children from the outpatient clinic with a normal cardiac status including echocardiogram. These controls were deemed to have a normal cardiac status by a pediatric cardiologist after

Discussion

This tissue Doppler study found significant alterations of right and left ventricular regional mechanics in the catheterization laboratory immediately after interventional closure of an ASD. All changes were subclinical and resolved within 24 hours after the procedure. To our knowledge, there is only 1 previous literature report on myocardial velocities after ASD device closure.13 In that study, no change in myocardial velocities was found on the day after intervention in 7 patients. Those

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