Abstract
Right ventricular function has prognostic significance in patients with pulmonary hypertension. We evaluated whether cardiac magnetic resonance-derived strain and strain rate parameters could reliably reflect right ventricular systolic and diastolic function in precapillary pulmonary hypertension. End-systolic elastance and the time constant of right ventricular relaxation tau, both derived from invasive high-fidelity micromanometer catheter measurements, were used as gold standards for assessing systolic and diastolic right ventricular function, respectively. Nineteen consecutive precapillary pulmonary hypertension patients underwent cardiac magnetic resonance and right heart catheterization prospectively. Cardiac magnetic resonance data were compared with those of 19 control subjects. In pulmonary hypertension patients, associations between strain- and strain rate-related parameters and invasive hemodynamic parameters were evaluated. Longitudinal peak systolic strain, strain rate, and early diastolic strain rate were lower in PAH patients than in controls; peak atrial-diastolic strain rate was higher in pulmonary hypertension patients. Similarly, circumferential peak systolic strain rate was lower and peak atrial-diastolic strain rate was higher in pulmonary hypertension. In pulmonary hypertension, no correlations existed between cardiac magnetic resonance-derived and hemodynamically derived measures of systolic right ventricular function. Regarding diastolic parameters, tau was significantly correlated with peak longitudinal atrial-diastolic strain rate (r = -0.61), deceleration time (r = 0.75), longitudinal systolic to diastolic time ratio (r = 0.59), early diastolic strain rate (r = -0.5), circumferential peak atrial-diastolic strain rate (r = -0.52), and deceleration time (r = 0.62). Strain analysis of the right ventricular diastolic phase is a reliable non-invasive method for detecting right ventricular diastolic dysfunction in PAH.