Aortic root motion: a marker of left ventricular diastolic dysfunction using M-mode echocardiography? An observational study.

Echocardiography remains the best non invasive tool for identifying patients who may have impaired filling of the left ventricle or diastolic dysfunction. The most accurate echocardiographic modality that reveals normal and abnormal diastolic function is doppler tissue imaging (DTI), and more recently, strain imaging. The complex and user intense DTI modality traces the motion of the mitral annulus during left ventricular filling revealing diastolic impairment. The aortic annulus with its attached aortic root moves simultaneously with the rigidly attached mitral annulus. M-mode traced motion of the aortic root in diastole mimics the motion of the mitral annulus and thus should depict left ventricular diastolic function. Hypertensive patients and normal subjects were screened for left ventricular diastolic dysfunction (LVDD) with DTI, mitral inflow velocities (MIF) and M-mode aortic root motion (M-MARM). The easily obtained and less complex M-MARM was as accurate as DTI in detecting and ruling out regional