Year: 2021
Type: editorial
Abstract: This article refers to 'Layer-specific global longitudinal strain and the risk of heart failure and cardiovascular mortality in the general population: the Copenhagen City Heart Study' by K.G.Skaarup et al., published in this issue on pages 1819-1827.It has been more than 50 years since Folse and Braunwald 1 first described a technique to measure left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), the cornerstone metric for evaluation of cardiac function.2 Decades later, advances in cardiovascular (CV) imaging technology are providing new tools for early identification of cardiac impairment, even subclinical impairment.3 Such approaches will become even more essential as we shift our focus from treatment of full-blown disease to prevention strategies in heart failure (HF), a shift that is reminiscent of the move from reactive to preventive approaches for treating coronary artery disease.Patients who ultimately develop HF are exposed to multiple factors over a long period of time that affect myocyte biology.Nevertheless, the effects of these influences on myocardial mechanics may not be readily identifiable using standard assessment of left ventricular (LV) function.3,4 LVEF, as a volume-derived index, relies on geometric assumptions, is highly sensitive to loading conditions, and is a poor surrogate for LV contractile function.In the last 15 years, newly developed echocardiographic measures aimed to assess myocardial fibre deformation have been widely adopted in clinical practice and have proven to be more reliable and reproducible measures of LV function.Indeed, these techniques have been incorporated into the diagnosis and treatment in a variety of clinical settings.[5][6][7][8] Tracking the acoustic scatter, or myocardial speckles, generated by the ultrasound beam throughout the cardiac cycle allows for assessment of a variety of measures of myocardial strain, including global and regional strain, and has been shown to correlate well with sonomicrometry and magnetic resonance based myocardial tagging.Moreover, these measures have nowThe opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the Editors of the European Journal of Heart Failure or of the European Society of Cardiology.
DOI: 10.1002/ejhf.2342
Authors: Riccardo M. Inciardi, Scott D. Solomon
Language: English
Subfield: Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3198459612