Abstract Background: Bronchial asthma (BA) is a common chronic inflammatory condition
affecting the airways. Bronchial asthma not only affects the lung but also affects other organs
including the heart. Right ventricular (RV) hypertrophy and dilation and left ventricular (LV) diastolic
dysfunction were observed in severe BA. However, evaluation of ventricular function in this
disease by the use of recently proposed Doppler echocardiographic methods has not been extensively
studied before.
Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate ventricular function in young adult patients withBA.
Patients and methods: Fifty patients with bronchial asthma and 30 control subjects (mean ages
28.3 ± 7.0 and 26.8 ± 6.2 years, respectively) participated in this study. Systolic function was assessed
by subjective evaluation of wall motion for both ventricles and by fractional shortening for the left ventricle
(LV). LV diastolic function was evaluated by standard pulsed-wave Doppler echocardiography,
myocardial performance index (MPI) and transmitral flow propagation velocity (TFPV).RVfunction
was evaluated by MPI. No subject had signs or symptoms of clinically overt heart failure.
Results: Our results revealed that there were statistically significant differences in the peak E velocity,
peak E velocity/peak A velocity ratio and isovolumetric relaxation time between the two groups
(p< 0.05). Mean LV MPI in the bronchial asthma group (0.40± 0.13) was also significantly higher
than that of the controls (0.36 ±0.11, p< 0.05). On the other hand, there were no significant differ- |
