Aortic strain in bicuspid aortic valve: an analysis.

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Medical Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) diagnosis lacks early disease progression markers.
• Current monitoring via echocardiography and CT angiography has limitations.
• Need for advanced imaging techniques to assess BAV progression.

Purpose of the Study:

• Evaluate prognostic values of speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) aortic and left ventricular (LV) strain.
• Assess discriminative power of STE strain parameters.
• Correlate STE strain with valvular regurgitation severity in BAV.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of 45 BAV patients and 20 controls.
• 2D-STE for aortic and LV strain analysis.
• Follow-up for median 19.9 months for outcomes (HF, AVR, death).

Main Results:

• BAV patients showed higher LV indexed volumes and aortic diameter.
• Impaired LV global longitudinal strain (GLS) and augmented aortic GLS in BAV patients.
• Aortic diameter best related to BAV; aortic GLS correlated with significant aortic regurgitation (AR).

Conclusions:

• BAV is associated with impaired LV-GLS and augmented aortic GLS.
• STE aortic strain relates to AR but is not a reliable predictor of aortic valve replacement (AVR) in BAV.
• Indexed LV end-diastolic volume was the sole predictor of AVR in this cohort.