Key result
Advanced echocardiography detects early subtle myocardial abnormalities in subclinical thyroid dysfunction.
Why the study?
Subclinical thyroid dysfunction has a relatively high prevalence and its early cardiac involvement is not fully understood using conventional echocardiography.
Do new echocardiographic techniques improve the detection of early cardiac abnormalities in patients with subclinical thyroid dysfunction compared to conventional echocardiography?
Do new echocardiographic techniques improve the detection of early cardiac abnormalities in patients with subclinical thyroid dysfunction compared to conventional echocardiography?
Advanced echocardiographic techniques like CDMI and IBS are valuable for detecting early, subclinical myocardial dysfunction in patients with subclinical hypo- or hyperthyroidism.
The new echocardiographic techniques for the study of physiopathological intramyocardial phenomena include video densitometry (VD), integrated backscatter (IBS), and color Doppler myocardial imaging (CDMI). Being more independent from cardiac load and from rotational and translational heart motion, these new sensible, noninvasive techniques such as CDMI and IBS show a real incremental value in comparison with conventional echocardiography and allow to detect subtle functional and textural abnormalities of intramural myocardium, partially undetectable by conventional two-dimensional Doppler echocardiography. Subclinical thyroid dysfunction (STD), both in its hypo- and hyperthyroidism form, has a relatively high prevalence in general population (9-15% with a lower percentage of adult males), hence it could be very useful to study more deeply heart involvement in these physiopathological conditions and understand the complex relationship between thyroid and heart. The use of these new ultrasonic techniques in subclinical hypothyroidism helps to detect the early simultaneous involvement of both cardiac cycle phases, which causes a decrease of intramyocardial contractility and an impairment of both active and passive phases of diastole. In subclinical hyperthyroidism, these new ultrasonic techniques permitted to discover more complex and different early cardiac abnormalities of both systolic and diastolic phases.
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Bello et al. (2009) conducted a review in Subclinical thyroid dysfunction. New echocardiographic techniques (video densitometry, integrated backscatter, color Doppler myocardial imaging) vs. Conventional echocardiography was evaluated. New echocardiographic techniques such as color Doppler myocardial imaging and integrated backscatter allow for the detection of early subtle functional and textural cardiac abnormalities in subclinical thyroid dysfunction.
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