title: Individual patient meta-analyses of restrictive diastolic filling pattern and mortality in patients post acute myocardial infarction and in patients with chronic heart failure.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Doppler echocardiographic assessment of diastolic filling provides a non-invasive estimate of left ventricular (LV) filling pressure and the most advanced diastolic filling grade, the restrictive filling pattern (RFP), has been linked to prognosis in patients post acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and with heart failure (HF). There remains some uncertainty about the prognostic role of RFP in patients with varied levels of systolic function. The objective of this collaboration is to determine whether the presence of RFP offers additional prognostic information over LV systolic function, symptoms or other clinical factors in patients post AMI or with HF.
  
  
  METHODS
  The Meta-analysis Research Group in Echocardiography (MeRGE) has been established in order to test this through two individual patient meta-analyses. Prospective studies that enrolled patients with either established HF or post AMI and included Doppler-echocardiography and outcome data will be merged into two large datasets (3739 AMI patients and 3540 HF patients) in order to evaluate the independent effects of RFP upon total and cardiovascular mortality using Kaplan-Meier survival analysis methods and Cox proportional hazards model for multi-variate analysis. Survival will be examined within different bands of LV systolic function based upon ejection fraction (EF).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This unique dataset will provide a very large cohort of patients, which will be adequately powered to provide new and prognostically important information to further aid risk stratification in these two high-risk patient groups.
authors.affiliation: The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. g.whalley@auckland.ac.nz
authors.forename: Gillian A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Whalley
authors.forename: Greg D
authors.initials: GD
authors.lastname: Gamble
authors.forename: Frank L
authors.initials: FL
authors.lastname: Dini
authors.forename: Allan L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Klein
authors.forename: Jacob E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Møller
authors.forename: Miguel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Quintana
authors.forename: Cheuk-Man
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Robert N
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Doughty
mesh_terms: D002908:Chronic Disease; D003971:Diastole / Q000502:physiology; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality* / Q000503:physiopathology; D018487:Ventricular Dysfunction, Left / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality / Q000503:physiopathology; D016277:Ventricular Function, Left / Q000502:physiology*