BACKGROUND Chronic fluid overload is common in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and can with time lead to diastolic dysfunction and heart failure. We investigated whether markers of fluid status, such as NT-proBNP and bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS), can predict echocardiographic findings of diastolic dysfunction in non-dialysis CKD5 patients. METHODS BIS, echocardiography, and meas...

Different patterns of left-ventricular (LV) diastolic dysfunction were reported in patients with pulmonary hypertension (PHT). There are no data regarding the relationship between the severity of PHT and LV diastolic dysfunction. In order to determine the severity of PHT at which LV diastolic dysfunction occurs and to identify its pattern, we studied by Doppler echocardiography 120 patients wit...

Background. Diastolic dysfunction is common among dialysis patients and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Novel echocardiographic speckle tracking strain analysis permits accurate assessment of left ventricular diastolic function, independent of loading conditions and taking all myocardial segments into account. The aim of the study was to evaluate the prevalence of diastoli...

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a disease state with characteristic pathologic changes most likely to result in abnormalities of diastolic function. Indeed, HCM may well be considered a “poster child” for diastolic dysfunction, because pronounced ventricular hypertrophy is associated with a reduced left ventricular (LV) cavity. The pressurevolume relationship would almost certainly be shif...

Changes in extracellular potassium concentration affect nearly all aspects of myocardial function. Reductions in potassium concentration alter the resting membrane potential, membrane conductance for sodium and potassium, repolarization time, relative refractory time, and conduction velocity. The arrhythmogenic consequences of these effects of potassium depletion are well recognized by the medi...

c s w d Left ventricular (LV) diastolic dysfunction is being increasingly recognized as a marker of risk both in ischemic and nonischemic cardiomyopathies. In fact, the syndrome of congestive heart failure, classically considered a hallmark of systolic dysfunction, can be completely dependent on diastolic dysfunction of the LV (1), and its long-term prognosis is similarly poor. In the natural h...

In adults with sickle cell disease (SCD), echocardiographic evidence of diastolic dysfunction is an independent risk factor for death that is additive to pulmonary hypertension. In this issue of Blood, Johnson and colleagues describe echocardiography and polysomnography results from 44 children with SCD. Because their echocardiograms were ordered for clinical indications, potentially biasing to...