Left Atrial Speckle Tracking: The Importance of Rest and Stress Measurements!

pp 475-476

Abstract

Atrial function, with its three different phases (reservoir, conduit and pump during atrial contraction), is related to the risk of stroke in atrial fibrillation (AF), (3, 4) heart failure, ischemic disease and also in Tako-tsubo syndrome. (5)Many efforts have been made to measure its function with several methods such as LA strain and strain rate by speckle tracking echocardiography (6), and also to detect LA appendage stunning after cardioversion for atrial fibrillation. (7, 8) These studies already defined the normal values for LA strain and strain rate in healthy subjects (6) indicating the usefulness of LA function and diastolic dysfunction as early predictors of cardiovascular events. However, very limited data is currently available on the effect of stress on LA strain. (9) In the light of these studies the paper from Zertuche et al. (10) is very interesting, since it manages to describe the reference value of LA longitudinal strain at rest and during peak exercise stress echo in healthy subjects and to analyze the relationship between deformation and E/e’ ratio to determine changes in atrial stiffness.