Childhood cardiovascular assessment
Conventional and tissue Doppler echocardiography was performed using a
Canon Aplio i900 machine (PST-50BT neonatal transducer) according to the
guidelines of the American Society of Echocardiography (9). Measures
which were assessed were indices of systolic and diastolic left
ventricular function, including peak systolic mitral annular tissue
velocity and midwall fractional shortening and peak mitral annular
velocities in early diastole (e’), a measure of diastolic relaxation.
The ratio of early diastolic transmitral flow velocity E/E’ was
calculated. Left ventricular mass (LVM) measurements were normalized to
body surface area as indexed LVM (LVMI). Speckle tracking analysis was
also performed to calculated left ventricular global longitudinal
systolic function. Right ventricular systolic function was also assessed
by tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion.