Assessment of right ventricular functions in patients with sepsis, severe sepsis and septic shock and its prognostic importance: a tissue Doppler study.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the potential contributions of the right ventricle (RV) performance evaluated using tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) on the assessment of the severity and prognosis of sepsis.

Methods: The study was completed with 55 patients (male/female 26/29, age 66.9 ± 20.3 years) and 28 healthy controls (male/female 14/14, age 59.4 ± 18.3 years). The RV-TDI parameters, mainly the RV myocardial peak systolic velocities (Sm, cm/s) and myocardial performance index (MPI) were recorded, in addition to the standard echocardiographic evaluation.

Results: The patients were classified into 3 groups based on the severity of sepsis. The RV-Sm value was significantly lower in the severe sepsis-septic shock (n = 31) than that of the sepsis (n = 24) and the control groups (n = 28) (P = .001). The RV-MPI was high both in the severe sepsis-septic shock and the sepsis compared with the control group (P = .02). The patients were classified into 3 groups based on in-hospital mortality. The RV-Sm was lower in non-surviving (n = 27) than in the surviving (n = 28) and the control groups (n = 28) (P = .002). The RV-MPI was found to be higher in the non-surviving patients than the surviving and the control groups (P < .001).

Conclusion: Our study shows that the RV dysfunction evaluated using TDI, particularly the RV-Sm and MPI values, were related with the severity of sepsis and mortality.