Left Ventricular Twist and Untwist in Patients Undergoing Elective Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

Left ventricular (LV) twist and untwist plays important roles in physiological adaptation and development of clinically relevant cardiac diseases.

To assess LV twist and untwist in patients undergoing elective percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) by two-dimensional (2D) speckle tracking echocardiography (STE).

Fifty patients who had stable angina pectoris and/or abnormal result from noninvasive stress tests were enrolled after undergoing elective PCI. Conventional and 2D STE were performed before elective PCI and after 3 months.

There was no significant systolic improvement in conventional echocardiography. However, there was a significant diastolic improvement after elective PCI as higher E, E/A, e` and lower E/e` (P < 0.034, <0.042, 0.015, and 0.033, respectively). In addition, there was a statistically significant improvement of STE-derived systolic parameters as regard higher global longitudinal strain, peak twist, and torsion (P value 0.009, 0.009, and < 0.001, respectively). Furthermore, there was significant improvement of STE-derived diastolic parameters as higher peak untwist, recoil, and lower time to peak untwist (P value 0.013, 0.001, and 0.004, respectively).

LV and untwist parameters were improved before most of conventional echocardiographic parameters in postrevascularization of stable coronary artery disease.