Study limitations
There are several limitations to our study. Firstly, this was a single
center study which increases the potential for selection bias. There
were also several patients excluded due to inadequate echocardiographic
image quality which could have introduced an additional bias. However,
no significant differences in patients baseline demographics were found
between those included and excluded from this study. The utilization of
only septal e’ and septal mitral annular E/e’ ratio is also a limitation
to the assessment of LV diastolic function, as this is susceptible to
changes in LV loading conditions. Nonetheless, these were the same
echocardiographic parameters used in previous studies. Ideally, a more
recent criteria to measure diastolic function should be applied but we
were limited to the data available.