• Anthony J Weekes, Abhiram Reddy, Margaret R Lewis, and H James Norton.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, Carolinas Medical Center, 1000 Blythe Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28203, USA. anthony.weekes@carolinashealthcare.org
• J Ultrasound Med. 2012 Dec 1;31(12):1891-7.

ObjectivesRapid bedside assessment of left ventricular (LV) function can aid in the evaluation of the critically ill patient and guide clinical management. Our primary hypothesis was that mitral valve E-point septal separation measurements would correlate with contemporaneous fractional shortening measurements of LV systolic function when performed by emergency physicians. Our secondary hypothesis was that E-point septal separation as a continuous variable would predict fractional shortening using a linear regression model.MethodsWe studied a prospective convenience sample of patients undergoing a sequence of LV systolic function measurements during a 3-month period at a suburban academic emergency department with a census of 114,000 patients. The sample included adult emergency department patients who were determined by the treating emergency physician to have 1 or more clinical indications for bedside LV systolic function assessment. Investigators performed bedside M-mode cardiac sonographic measurements of fractional shortening and E-point septal separation using the parasternal long-axis window. The sequence of LV systolic function measurements was randomized.ResultsA total of 103 patients were enrolled. The Pearson correlation coefficient for E-point septal separation and fractional shortening measurements was -0.59 (P< .0001). Linear regression analysis performed for E-point septal separation with fractional shortening as the dependent variable yielded an R2 value of 0.35.ConclusionsE-point septal separation and fractional shortening measurements had a moderate negative correlation. E-point septal separation, when used as a continuous variable in a linear regression model, did not reliably predict fractional shortening.

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