Reference Values for Left Atrial Strain and Strain Rate Based on a Large Sample of Healthy Chinese Adults: An...

While reference values of left atrial (LA) deformation parameters in Western populations have been established, reference data in healthy Asian populations are limited.

To establish age- and sex-specific reference values for LA strain and strain rate (SR) based on a large sample of healthy Chinese adults using magnetic resonance-feature tracking (MR-FT).

Retrospective.

Four hundred and eight healthy Chinese adults (220 males, aged 43.5 ± 11.5 years; 188 females, aged 45.3 ± 12.8 years).

1.5 T/balanced steady-state free precession.

Reservoir strain (ε_s ), conduit strain (ε_e ), booster strain (ε_a ), peak positive SR (SRs), peak early negative SR (SRe), and peak late negative SR (SRa) were obtained by MR-FT.

We used Shapiro-Wilk test, Student's t-test, Mann-Whitney U-test, linear regression, and coefficient of determination (r² ).

Women demonstrated significantly greater LA strain (ε_s [%]: 44.0 ± 9.9 vs. 38.3 ± 8.7; ε_e [%]: 26.7 ± 8.0 vs. 22.3 ± 6.8; ε_a [%]: 17.3 ± 4.4 vs. 16.0 ± 3.8) and SR (SRs [/second]: 1.8 ± 0.5 vs. 1.6 ± 0.4; SRe [/second]: -2.5 ± 0.9 vs. -2.1 ± 0.7; SRa [/second]: -1.9 ± 0.6 vs. -1.8 ± 0.5) than men. For both sexes, aging was significantly associated with decreased ε_s , SRs, ε_e , and SRe (r²  = 0.07, r²  = 0.05, r²  = 0.19, and r²  = 0.24 for men; r²  = 0.13, r²  = 0.11, r²  = 0.31, and r²  = 0.46 for women), and significantly increased ε_a (r²  = 0.03 and r²  = 0.05 for men and women). There was no significant correlation between age and SRa in both sexes (P = 0.057 and P = 0.377 for men and women, respectively).

We provide age- and sex-specific reference values for LA strain and SR based on a large sample of healthy Chinese adults using MR-FT.

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