Abstract:Objective To investigate clinical characteristics of patients with aortic valve disease and coronary artery disease (CAD), and improve the pertinence of clinical management. Methods Clinical data of 78 patients who were older than 50 years and underwent isolated aortic valve replacement (AVR) in General Hospital of Shenyang Command from January to October 2010. All the patients were divided into two groups according to whether they had CAD:20 patients with CAD in the CAD group, including 19 males and 1 female with their average age of 64.6±8.3 years, and 58 patients without CAD in the control group, including 28 males and 30 females with their average age of 58.7±6.2 years. Clinical characteristics of AVR patients with CAD were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance and multiple factor analysis. Results One-way analysis showed that the incidence of old age (P=0.000), male patients (P=0.004), diabetes (P=0.004), aortic regurgitation (P=0.034), valvular lesion (P=0.028), and postoperative mechanical ventilation time (P=0.008)of CAD group patients were significantly higher or longer than those of control group patients. Multiple factor analysis showed that independent clinical characteristics of AVR patients with CAD included male patients, old age, prolonged postoperative mechanical ventilation time, significantly decreased pulmonary arterial systolic pressure (PASP) at 6th postoperative month, and significant preoperative right ventricular diastolic dysfunction. Conclusion The screening age for possible CAD should be reasonably lowered if male patients with aortic valve disease have concomitant preoperative right ventricular diastolic dysfunction and/or tricuspid aortic valve degeneration. Patients undergoing isolated AVR need to take medications to reverse left ventricular remodeling for a long time to avoid severe arrhythmia.
Abstract: Right ventricular dysfunction or right heart failure is a complex clinical syndrome and often leads to a poor prognosis and high mortality. In order to detect right ventricular dysfunction at an early stage, provide a therapy guidance and evaluate treatment outcomes, right ventricular function evaluation has aroused more and more concern in clinical physicians. With the advantages of being non-invasive, accuracy and repetitiveness, echocardiography is used extensively in the assessment of heart function. In this review, we focus on how to use echocardiography to evaluate right ventricular function easily, efficiently, accurately and sensitively, and provide a good foundation for its further clinical application.