Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography
Clinical InvestigationRight Ventricular Size and FunctionRight Heart Assessment by Echocardiography: Gender and Body Size Matters
Section snippets
Study Population
Patients were identified from the echocardiography database of a tertiary care center. In this database, for each patient, the indication for the study, measured height and weight, and a predefined set of echocardiographic measurements are recorded. For patients with structurally and functionally normal hearts, the study results are coded as “normal” by a staff cardiologist. The criteria for classification of echocardiographic results as normal are sinus rhythm, absence of structural
Study Population
From a total of 46,367 echocardiographic studies in adult patients performed between 2000 and 2009, in 2,743 (6%), the results were coded as normal. Of these subjects, 1,118 were excluded from the present analysis because of potentially confounding preexisting disease. Reasons for exclusion were coronary artery disease in 168, lung disease in 97, connective tissue disorders in 211, inherited myopathies in 16, human immunodeficiency virus infection in 20, studies performed in patients in the
Discussion
Right-heart dimensions and simple measurements of right ventricular systolic function such as FAC and TAPSE are commonly used for echocardiographic assessment of right-heart dimensions and systolic function. Yet normal reference values for these measurements are based on results from numerous, at times small studies. The number of normal subjects used to define reference ranges for right ventricular dimensions and function range from 267 subjects for right atrial long-axis dimension (derived
Conclusions
Gender and body surface area are important determinants of right ventricular dimensions and systolic function as measured on two-dimensional echocardiography. We thus propose the use of measurements indexed to body surface area, with upper and lower reference ranges stratified for gender.
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2019, Journal of Veterinary CardiologyCitation Excerpt :The FAC was calculated as (RVAd−RVAs)/RVAd × 100% (Fig. 1). Right ventricular end-diastolic area and RVAs were normalized according to the following equation [30]: normalized RVAd (nRVAd) and RVAds (nRVAs) = RVAd and RVAs/body surface area. The RV Tei index was calculated as the sum of the isovolumic contraction time and isovolumic relaxation time divided by ejection time.