Five-year follow-up by transesophageal echocardiographic studies in primary antiphospholipid syndrome.

This prospective study describes valvular abnormalities assessed by transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) in patients with primary antiphospholipid syndrome (APLS) over a 5-year follow-up. Of the 56 patients with APLS evaluated at baseline, 47 (84%) had repeat TEE examinations, including 3 patients who died before the end of the follow-up. The first TEE study showed cardiac involvement (thickening or vegetations and embolic sources) in 34 subjects (61%), with mitral valve thickening, the most common abnormality, present in 30 patients (54%). Embolic sources were found in 14 patients (25%; 9 severe spontaneous echocardiographic contrast, 5 Libman-Sacks endocarditis), associated with mitral valve thickening or stenosis in 10 patients. Over the 5-year follow-up, cardiac involvement was unchanged in 30 subjects (64%). New cardiac abnormalities were observed in 17 patients (36%), 15 (88%) with high immunoglobulin-G (IgG) anticardiolipin antibody (aCL) titers and 2 (12%) with low IgG aCL titers. In conclusion, this study showed that mitral valve thickening and embolic sources are frequently observed in patients with APLS. Anticoagulant and/or antiplatelet treatment was ineffective in terms of valvular lesion regression. New appearances of cardiac involvement are significantly related to high IgG aCL titers.

Noninvasive quantification of respiratory modulation on left ventricular size and stroke volume.

To noninvasively explore the complex interactions between heart rate, left ventricular (LV) stroke volume (SV) and respiration, different techniques were proposed and applied to the beat-to-beat measurements of end-diastolic (ED), end-systolic (ES) volumes and SV, obtained from echocardiographic acoustic quantification LV volume signal. Data were obtained from eight patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM, age 60 +/- 2, mean +/- SE), and from 11 age-matched healthy volunteers (N, age 63 +/- 2). Spectral analysis showed an increase in HF power in DCM, both in ED (in ml2, 58 +/- 18 versus 19 +/- 5 in N) and in SV (in ml2, 55 +/- 12 versus 17 +/- 5 in N), together with an increase in total power (in ml2, ED: 119 +/- 31 in DCM versus 48 +/- 9 in N; SV: 88 +/- 17 in DCM versus 31 +/- 8 in N). Folded scattergrams evidenced higher amplitude oscillations in DCM (in ml, ES: 7.93 +/- 1.29; ED: 7.94 +/- 1.59; SV: 7.27 +/- 0.91) compared to N (in ml, ES: 4.08 +/- 0.64; ED: 3.56 +/- 0.65; SV: 3.63 +/- 0.43). Moreover, the prevalent effect of increased afterload generating SV reduction during inspiration was pointed out in N, while an intersubject dispersion in the relation between respiratory phase and LV dimension changes was found in DCM. Black-box model identification summarized these mechanisms by means of a few quantitative parameters.