Echocardiographic parameters of the right ventricle in chronic hemodialysis

Right ventricular (RV) dysfunction is one of the leading predictors of mortality and heart failure in chronic hemodialysis (HD) patients.

To describe the different echocardiographic abnormalities of the RV in subjects with HD.

We performed a descriptive cross-sectional study covering the period from July to October 2018; involving 42 patients treated with chronic HD. Patients underwent a conventional transthoracic echocardiographic (TTE) study supplemented with tissue Doppler between two hemodialysis sessions.

We included 42 patients. The sex ratio of our population was 1.6 with a male predominance, the average age of patients was 62.7 ± 12.4 years. The most important cardiovascular risk factor was arterial hypertension (78.6%). The most important causative nephropathy was nephroangisclerosis (31% of cases). The average age of dialysis was 34.5±30 months. Forty-two percent of our patients had RV dilation, 38% had right atrium dilatation, 7% had Right ventricular outflow tract dilatation, and 59.5% had RV hypertrophy. We noted RV systolic dysfunction in 66.7% of cases, a predominant normalized tricuspid profile with an average E / A ratio of 1.11 ± 0.5.

Our study is consistent with the various echocardiographic data already raised in the literature, showing a high prevalence of RV dilatation and systolic dysfunction. It is one of the leading predictors of mortality and heart failure in chronic hemodialysis patients.