Clinical physiology and functional imaging
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Clin Physiol Funct Imaging · May 2019
Decreased biventricular longitudinal strain in patients with systemic sclerosis is mainly caused by pulmonary hypertension and not by systemic sclerosis per se.
Patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) due to systemic sclerosis (SSc) have high mortality. Left ventricular (LV) peak global longitudinal strain (GLS) is decreased in SSc. It is unknown whether low GLS is due to SSc or PAH. Therefore, our primary aim was to evaluate both LV and right ventricular free wall GLS (RVFW GLS) in SSc, with and without PAH, using cardiac magnetic resonance with feature tracking. Secondary aim was to relate GLS to invasive mean pulmonary arterial pressure (mPAP) and pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR). ⋯ Lower GLS is mainly determined by increased pulmonary pressure and not by SSc per se. Low LV and RVFW GLS are indicative of increased mPAP and PVR, which opens for improved non-invasive methods to select patients eligible for right heart catheterization and to monitor the effects of PAH therapy.