Do 4D flow CMR-derived LV blood flow kinetic energy parameters show stronger associations with age compared to standard 2D mitral inflow velocities in healthy volunteers?
4D flow CMR-derived LV blood flow kinetic energy parameters demonstrate stronger correlations with age than standard 2D diastolic metrics, suggesting potential utility in evaluating diastolic function.
Abstract Two-dimensional (2D) methods of assessing mitral inflow velocities are pre-load dependent, limiting their reliability for evaluating diastolic function. Left ventricular (LV) blood flow kinetic energy (KE) derived from four-dimensional flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (4D flow CMR) may offer improvements. It remains unclear whether 4D LV blood flow KE parameters are associated with physiological factors, such as age when compared to 2D mitral inflow velocities. Fifty-three healthy volunteers underwent standard CMR, plus 4D flow acquisition. LV blood flow KE parameters demonstrated good reproducibility with mean coefficient of variation of 6 ± 2% and an accuracy of 99% with a precision of 97%. The LV blood flow KEi EDV E/A ratio demonstrated good association to the 2D mitral inflow E/A ratio (r = 0.77, P < 0.01), with both decreasing progressively with advancing age (P < 0.01). Furthermore, peak E-wave KEi EDV and A-wave KEi EDV displayed a stronger association to age than the corresponding 2D metrics, peak E-wave and A-wave velocity (r = −0.51 vs −0.17 and r = 0.65 vs 0.46). Peak E-wave KEi EDV decreases whilst peak A-wave KEi EDV increases with advancing age. This study presents values for various LV blood flow KE parameters in health, as well as demonstrating that they show stronger and independent correlations to age than standard diastolic metrics.
Crandon et al. (Thu,) studied this question.