Cardiothoracic ratio from postero-anterior chest radiographs: a simple, reproducible and independent marker of disease severity and outcome in adults with congenital heart disease.

Objective: The wide spectrum of intracardiac anatomy and reparative surgery available for adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD) makes uniform measurement of cardiac size and disease severity challenging. The aim of this study was to assess the prognostic potential of cardiothoracic ratio, a simple marker of cardiomegaly, in a large cohort of ACHD.

Patients And Setting: Chest radiographs from 3033 ACHD patients attending our institution between 1998 and 2007 and 113 normal controls of similar age were analyzed blindly.

Prognostic value of mitral regurgitation assessment during exercise echocardiography in patients with left ventricular dysfunction: a follow-up study of 1.7 +/- 1.5 years.

Aims: The value of exercise echocardiography (EE) over resting echocardiography when this last incorporates information on mitral regurgitation (MR) is only partially known. Furthermore, limited data exist regarding the value of MR worsening during exercise in patients with left ventricular (LV) dysfunction. We investigate whether EE has incremental value over a resting echo-Doppler study; and whether post-exercise MR increments the value of EE for predicting outcome in patients with LV dysfunction.