• Maurizio Galderisi, Patrizio Lancellotti, Erwan Donal, Nuno Cardim, Thor Edvardsen, Gilbert Habib, Julien Magne, Gerald Maurer, and Bogdan A Popescu.
• Department of Translational Medical Sciences, Federico II University Hospital, Naples, Italy mgalderi@unina.it.
• Eur Heart J Cardiovasc Imaging. 2014 Jul 1; 15 (7): 810-6.

AimsThe non-invasive estimation of left ventricular filling pressures (LVFPs) represents a main goal in the clinical setting. Current recommendations encourage the use of pulsed-wave Tissue Doppler for calculating the ratio between the preload-dependent transmitral E velocity and the average of septal and lateral early diastolic velocities (e') of the mitral annulus. Despite its wide use, real utility of the E/e' ratio has been recently challenged in patients with either very advanced heart failure or preserved left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction. However, only few studies performed the invasive and non-invasive estimation of LVFP simultaneously. The EURO-FILLING Study will validate the E/e' ratio (and additional non-invasive estimates) against simultaneously measured LVFP obtained by left heart catheterization in a multicentre study involving reference European echo laboratories collecting a wide population sample size of cardiac patients with and without heart failure.Methods And ResultsThe EURO-FILLING study is a large, prospective observational study in which simultaneous assessment of invasive and non-invasive measurements of LVFP will be acquired in eight reference European centres. Centralized reading of the collected parameters will be performed in a core laboratory. Not only standardized echo Doppler measurements but also novel echo parameters such as LV global longitudinal strain and global atrial strain (obtainable by two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography) will be tested for predicting invasive measurements of LVFP.ConclusionsThe EURO-FILLING study is expected to provide important information on non-invasive assessment of LVFP and to contribute to the standardization of this assessment in clinical practice.Published on behalf of the European Society of Cardiology. All rights reserved. © The Author 2014. For permissions please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

28 keywords...

hide…