title: Assessment of left ventricular global twist in essential hypertensive heart by speckle tracking imaging.
abstract: The left ventricular twist was evaluated by 2-dimensional ultrasound speckle-tracking imaging (STI) in 50 patients with hypertension with normal geometric left ventricle (LV) and 45 normal subjects as control group. The mean value of LV rotation was obtained at each plane using STI. LV twist and twist velocity were defined as apical rotation/rotation rate relative to the base respectively. To adjust the intersubject differences in heart rates, the time sequence were normalized. The results showed that peak twist developed near the end of systole. Peak LV twist was significantly higher in patients with hypertension than normal controls (P<0.001). The diastolic untwisting mainly occurred in early diastole ( approximately 38%). Compared with normal controls, untwisting rate (Untw R) in patients with hypertension was significantly reduced (P<0.001), and untwisting half-time (UHT) was significantly delayed (P<0.05). This study demonstrated that STI has a potential ability to evaluate the early change of heart function in patients with hypertension by measuring the twist of LV.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ultrasonography, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China. hanweide2005@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Mingxing
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Xinfang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Qing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Lü
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D002309:Cardiology / Q000379:methods*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003971:Diastole; D004452:Echocardiography / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006321:Heart / Q000503:physiopathology; D006352:Heart Ventricles / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000473:pathology*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013599:Systole