Background: Ischemic heart disease persists as the leading global cause of death and lost life years in adults. The assessment of cardiac function by measuring LVEF using echocardiography is the most common method in daily clinical practice.
The Aim of the work: This study aims to assess the accuracy and feasibility of three-dimensional echocardiography in the detection of occult left ventricular dysfunction in comparison with the two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography.
Patients and Methods: This study enrolled 100 participants in 2 groups, Group I included 50 patients with single LAD lesion eligible for PCI withp normal 2D LV EF compared to Group II including 50 healthy participants with the same demographic matched as a control group. All patients were subjected to conventional echocardiography, Three-Dimensional Echocardiography, and 2D speckle tracking before and one month after the PCI.
Results: In terms of 2D Echocardiography parameters, we found no statistically significant differences between the 2 groups in all parameters [p-value > 0.05], except for GLS [p-value = 0.001]. As regards 3D Echocardiography parameters, we found no not statistically significant differences between the 2 groups in all parameters. We compared the mean EF of 2D and 3D before and after PCI in Group I patients, and we found no statistically significant difference between 2D, and 3D in the estimation of LV volumes and LVEF before PCI [p-value = 0.7], and after PCI [p-value = 0.26].
Conclusion: There are no significant differences between 2D and 3D echocardiography in the estimation of LV volumes and LVEF in patients with significant LAD single vessel disease before and after PCI. Also, we found that the 2D Global longitudinal strain, based on speckle tracking imaging, is a potentially useful method to detect the occult LV dysfunction.