Global and regional right ventricular function in normal infants and infants with transposition of the great arteries after Senning operation

Echocardiographic assessment of right ventricular size, global function, and regional wall motion was performed in 29 normal infants and 19 infants with transposition of the great arteries 1 to 41 months after they underwent the Senning procedure. Sixteen of the patients with transposition of the great arteries were in clinically good condition and three had congestive heart failure. The right ventricular endocardial surface was digitized frame by frame for a complete cardiac cycle in both subxiphoid long-axis (coronal plane) and short-axis (parasagittal plane) views, and the cross-sectional area and the area change fraction (AF) were calculated. In each plane the right ventricular wall was subdivided into four anatomic regions (infundibular, free wall, diaphragmatic, and septal). With the use of a floating point center of mass model the direction and average extent of motion of the endocardium was determined for each region. In normal infants the infundibular and free wall portions of the right ventricle exhibited the greatest inward motion and the septal segments the least inward motion. Although the maximal area in both long-axis (r = .85) and short-axis (r = .85) views was highly correlated with body surface area (BSA), neither global nor regional function was significantly correlated with age or BSA. In clinically well patients after Senning procedure regional right ventricular function followed an entirely different pattern than that seen in normal infants. The endocardium of the septal segments showed the greatest inward motion in systole. In contrast to those in normal infants, maximal and minimal cross-sectional areas did not correlate significantly with BSA.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)