Reproducibility of left ventricular mass by echocardiogram in the ELSA-Brasil

Abstract

BackgroundEchocardiography, though non-invasive and having relatively low-cost, presents issues of variability which can limit its use in epidemiological studies.ObjectiveTo evaluate left ventricular mass reproducibility when assessed at acquisition (online) compared to when assessed at a reading center after electronic transmission (offline) and also when assessed by different readers at the reading center.MethodsEchocardiographers from the 6 ELSA-Brasil study investigation centers measured the left ventricular mass online during the acquisition from 124 studies before transmitting to the reading center, where studies were read according to the study protocol. Half of these studies were blindly read by a second reader in the reading center.ResultsFrom the 124 echocardiograms, 5 (4%) were considered not measurable. Among the remaining 119, 72 (61%) were women, mean age was 50.2 ± 7.0 years and 2 had structural myocardial abnormalities. Images were considered to be optimal/ good by the reading center for 110 (92.4%) cases. No significant difference existed between online and offline measurements (1,29 g, CI 95% −3.60-6.19), and the intraclass correlation coefficient between them was 0.79 (CI 95% 0.71-0.85). For images read by two readers, the intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.86 (CI 95% 0.78-0.91).ConclusionThere were no significant drifts between online and offline left ventricular mass measurements, and reproducibility was similar to that described in previous studies. Central quantitative assessment of echocardiographic studies in reading centers, as performed in the ELSA-Brasil study, is feasible and useful in clinical and epidemiological studies performed in our setting.

Application and evaluation of sacubitril/valsartan in patients with cardiac insufficiency during perioperative period of cardiac surgery

“…LVED can reflect the size of the left ventricle and the degree of myocardial remodeling. A study by Tognon et al (12) found that the degree of left ventricular enlargement was significantly correlated with the decline of heart function and the increase of NT-pro BNP. Therefore, in the present study, the variations of LVEF and LVED were regarded as the primary indicators for evaluating the therapeutic effect of sacubitril/valsartan on cardiac function.…”