[Left ventricular systolic and diastolic dysfunction in patients with chronic renal failure treated with...

Systolic and diastolic left ventricular dysfunction is common and important predictor of risk of death in end-stage renal failure. Systolic dysfunction is defined echocardiographically by a shortening fraction < 25% or an ejection fraction < 40%. Systolic dysfunction has a poor prognosis, strongly associated with myocardial ischemia and left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). Diastolic dysfunction combines relaxation problems with compliance abnormalities and usually is associated with LVH. It is not clinically possible to distinguish systolic from diastolic LV dysfunction. This underlines the importance of echocardiographic diagnosis. In the present study we have analysed echocardiographically the left ventricular systolic and diastolic function and some possible risk factors contributing to its dysfunction development in patients with chronic renal failure (crf) treated by hemodialysis (HD). From a cohort of 85 patients with crf we selected for analysis 59 clinically stable patients. Echocardiography (ECHO), ECG, body mass index (BMI), serum creatinine, urea, total protein, albumin, hemoglobin, hematocrit, electrolytes, endothelin (ET-1) and parathyroid hormone (PTH) concentrations were evaluated in all patients after HD session. In all HD patients systolic and diastolic LV dysfunction was observed as well as LVH: concentric LVH was detected by ECHO in 46 patients and in 13 patients excentric LVH was observed. Mean serum concentrations of urea, creatinine, endothelin (ET-1), PTH and phosphate were increased while serum concentration of hemoglobin, total protein, albumin, sodium, potassium, calcium were in the normal range. Positive correlation was found between PTH serum concentration and LVM r = 0.704 (p < 0.001), between PTH serum concentration and IVS r = 0.267 (p < 0.04), between PTH serum concentration and PW r = -0.238 (p < 0.04), between ET-1 and RWT r = 0.447 (p < 0.04) and negative correlation between BMI and LVMI r = -0.451 (p < 0.05). Our observations suggests that uremic cardiomyopathy is heterogenous (systolic and diastolic dysfunction) and multifactoral. The correlations between serum PTH concentration and LVH and between BMI and LVH confirmed that both hyperparathyroidism and malnutrition are important factors influencing the development of LVH which plays an important role in the systolic and diastolic cardiac failure in HD patients.