DISCUSSION
This study seeks to examine the evidence for the utility of 2D and 3D echocardiographic parameters of cardiac chamber size and systolic function in differentiating between adult patients with acute myocarditis and controls. Our study identified three echocardiographic parameters (LVEDD, LVEF and LV-GLS) to be useful in the differentiation between myocarditis and control populations, but with different overall effect sizes. This study also highlights the application and value of echocardiography as first line imaging in the clinical setting for differentiation of patients with acute- and sub-acute phases of myocarditis. As this disease entity manifests in a heterogeneous manner, with a known preponderance to LV impairment (due to greater quantity of myocardium), assessment of the LV systolic function may provide greater sensitivity to clinical and subclinical changes to the myocardium. Patients presenting with myocarditis, both acute and recurrent, typically undergo echocardiography for an initial assessment of ventricular size and function, along with assessment of regional wall-motion abnormalities (18).More sensitive measures of LV systolic function such as LV-GLS have been found to be useful in several cardiac pathologies, both for diagnosis and prognostication. Similarly, these measures have also demonstrated the greatest ability to identify earlier phenotypes of myocarditis, especially those where baseline LV systolic function is preserved