Right Ventricular Systolic Dysfunction in Chagas Disease Defined by Speckle-Tracking Echocardiography: A Comparative Study with Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Background: Chagas disease leads to biventricular heart failure, usually with prominent systemic congestion. Although echocardiography is widely used in clinical routine, the utility of echocardiographic parameters to detect right ventricular (RV) systolic dysfunction in patients with Chagas disease is unknown. We sought to study the diagnostic value of echocardiography, including speckle-tracking parameters, to distinguish individuals with RV systolic dysfunction from those with normal RV systolic function in Chagas disease using cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) as the reference method.

A Challenging Differential Diagnosis: Distinguishing between Endomyocardial Fibrosis and Apical Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.

Endomyocardial fibrosis, which is a cause of restrictive cardiomyopathy, is characterized by the deposition of fibrous tissue in the apical region of 1 or both ventricles. The condition not only affects the diastolic dynamics of the ventricles, but also the function of the atrioventricular valves. The disease occurs predominantly in tropical regions worldwide and in sub-Saharan Africa.

Diastolic dysfunction as a predictor of weaning failure: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Purpose: Weaning failure and prolonged mechanical ventilation are associated with increased morbidity, cost of care, and high mortality rates. In the last few years, cardiac performance has been recognized as a common etiology of weaning failure, and growing evidence suggests that left ventricular diastolic dysfunction is a key factor that determines weaning outcomes. Therefore, we performed a systematic review and a meta-analysis to evaluate whether diastolic dysfunction in the critically ill patient subjected to mechanical ventilation is an independent predictor of weaning failure.

Right ventricular Doppler echocardiographic study of indeterminate form of chagas disease.

Background: Patients with indeterminate form of Chagas disease/cardiac normality (ICD/CN) exhibited normal electrocardiograms and chest X-rays; however, more sophisticated tests detected some degree of morphological and functional changes in the heart.

Objective: To assess the prevalence of systolic and diastolic dysfunction of the right ventricle (RV) in patients with ICD/CN.

Methods: This was a case-control and prevalence study.