Figure 7.
HFrEF patients exhibited regional diastolic dysfunction adjacent to the infarction. Four-chamber, apical echocardiographic images of HFrEF patients were examined to divide the viable myocardium into regions adjacent and remote to the myocardial infarction (schematically illustrated in A, right panel). Using speckle-tracking to examine local strain at indicated regions (arrows), comparison was made with regionally matched values in control hearts (A, left panel). Peak strain was reduced in HFrEF hearts, particularly in the adjacent region (B). Representative recordings of strain rate (C) and mean measurements (D) reveal that diastolic strain rate was also reduced adjacent to the myocardial infarction in HFrEF, but similar to control values in the remote region (nhearts = 12, 9 in control, HFrEF). *P < 0.05 with two-way ANOVA with a post hoc Bonferroni t-test.