Echocardiographic parameters of the right ventricle in chronic hemodialysis.

Introduction: Right ventricular (RV) dysfunction is one of the leading predictors of mortality and heart failure in chronic hemodialysis (HD) patients.

Aim: To describe the different echocardiographic abnormalities of the RV in subjects with HD.

Methods: We performed a descriptive cross-sectional study covering the period from July to October 2018; involving 42 patients treated with chronic HD. Patients underwent a conventional transthoracic echocardiographic (TTE) study supplemented with tissue Doppler between two hemodialysis sessions.

Results: We included 42 patients. The sex ratio of our population was 1.6 with a male predominance, the average age of patients was 62.7 ± 12.4 years. The most important cardiovascular risk factor was arterial hypertension (78.6%). The most important causative nephropathy was nephroangisclerosis (31% of cases). The average age of dialysis was 34.5±30 months. Forty-two percent of our patients had RV dilation, 38% had right atrium dilatation, 7% had Right ventricular outflow tract dilatation, and 59.5% had RV hypertrophy. We noted RV systolic dysfunction in 66.7% of cases, a predominant normalized tricuspid profile with an average E / A ratio of 1.11 ± 0.5.

Conclusion: Our study is consistent with the various echocardiographic data already raised in the literature, showing a high prevalence of RV dilatation and systolic dysfunction. It is one of the leading predictors of mortality and heart failure in chronic hemodialysis patients.