Right ventricular dysfunction in advanced heart failure.

For many years cardiologists were not interested in studying right ventricular function and the role of the right ventricle in heart failure and in other disease states has therefore been largely underestimated. More recently a consensus has grown on the critical role of right ventricular function in patients with advanced congestive heart failure. The estimation of right ventricular function is nowadays warranted in the standard evaluation of patients with heart failure either due to ischemic heart disease or to primary dilated cardiomyopathy, since it is helpful in the clinical assessment and in the prognostic stratification of such patients. Most information may be obtained non-invasively using sound but simple and reproducible echocardiographic indicators of right ventricular function.