Echocardiographic Assessment of Right Ventriculo-arterial Coupling: Clinical Correlates and Prognostic Impact in Heart Failure Patients Undergoing Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy

Figure 1. Criteria for patient inclusion and exclusion in this retrospective observational study. CRT: cardiac resynchronization therapy, EACVI: European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging.

Figure 2. Pearson's correlation analysis between TAPSE/PASP and log-transformed NT-proBNP before cardiac resynchronization therapy. Solid line represents its linear relationship, with 95% confidence interval limited by dashed lines. p < 0.05 was considered significant. NT-proBNP: N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide, PASP: pulmonary artery systolic pressure, TAPSE: tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion.

Figure 3. Percentage of patients with improved LVEF response by baseline PASP, TAPSE and TAPSE/PASP (categorized by median) during maximum follow-up period after CRT. Patients with an increase of LVEF ≥ 5% after CRT were considered to have an improved response. Small inset indicates median values for the variables presented. Number of patients that showed improved LVEF is indicated inside bars. p-values were calculated with use of the chi-square test. *p < 0.05 was considered significant. CRT: cardiac resynchronization therapy, LVEF: left ventricular ejection fraction, ns: not-significant, PASP: pulmonary artery systolic pressure, TAPSE: tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion.

Figure 4. ROC curves for baseline TAPSE, PASP and TAPSE/PASP to identify unimproved LVEF (defined as Δ LVEF < 5%) after CRT. AUC: area under the curve, CI: confidence interval, LVEF: left ventricular ejection fraction, PASP: pulmonary artery systolic pressure, ROC: Receiver operator characteristic, TAPSE: tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion. p < 0.05 was considered significantly different from dotted line (AUC = 0.5).