Assessment of Subclinical Biventricular Myocardial Systolic Function in
COVID-19 patients: A Tissue Doppler Imaging Echocardiography Study
Abstract
Background: The 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been
reported as pandemy and the number of patients continues to rise. Based
on recent data, cardiac injury is a prominent feature of the disease,
leading to increased morbidity and mortality.In the present study we
aimed to evaluate myocardial dysfunction using transthoracic
echocardiography (TTE) and tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) in hospitalized
COVID-19 patients. Methods and Results: We recruited 30 patients (56.7
% male, 55.80±14.949 years) who were hospitalized with the diagnosis
COVID-19 infection. We analyzed left ventricular (LV) and right
ventricular (RV) conventional and TDI parameters at the time of
hospitalization and during the course of the disease. Patients without
any cardiac disease and with preserved LV ejection fraction (EF) were
included.TTE examination was performed and all the variables were
recorded and analyzed retrospectively. We observed that both LV and RV
conventional echocardiographic parameters were similar when the day of
admission to the hospital was compared to the 5th day of the disease.
Regarding TDI analysis, we demonstrated significant impairment in LV
septal and lateral deformation (p˂.001) .In the correlation analysis no
marked correlation was observed between impairment in LV deformation and
inflammation biomarkers. Conclusion: Cardiac involvement is an important
feature of the COVID-19 infection but the exact mechanism is still
undefined. Echocardiography is an essential technique to describe
myocardial injury and provide new concepts for the possible definitions
of cardiac dysfunction.