Progression of Systolic Abnormalities in Patients With

Background—The definition of diastolic heart failure (DHF) relies on the use of sensitive tools to exclude the presence of systolic dysfunction. The use of ejection fraction (EF) of 50 % as the cutoff point may not be adequate to address such a task. We believe that systolic dysfunction is common in DHF. Methods and Results—Echocardiography with tissue Doppler imaging was performed in 339 subjects, of whom 92 had systolic heart failure (SHF) (EF50%), 73 had DHF (EF50 % with diastolic abnormalities on Doppler echocardiog-raphy), and 68 had isolated diastolic dysfunction (DD); 106 were normal control subjects. Regional myocardial velocity curves were constructed off-line with the use of a 6-basal, 6-midsegmental model. The peak regional myocardial sustained systolic (SM) and early diastolic (EM) velocities were significantly lower in patients with SHF, DHF, and DD than in control subjects in almost all the myocardial segments. Likewise, the mean SM (SHFDHFDDcontrol subjects; 3.31.04.61.35.41.06.31.0 cm/s; all P0.001) and mean EM (SHFDHFDDcontrol subjects; 3.61.2 3.91.35.31.67.21.7 cm/s; all P0.001) from the six basal segments were decreased in all the disease groups. A mean SM of 4.4cm/s (2 SD of control subjects) predicted the presence of systolic dysfunction in 92% of patients with SHF, 52 % with DHF, and 14 % with DD. Conclusions—Through the use of tissue Doppler imaging, systolic abnormalities were evident in patients previously labeled as DHF and to a much lesser extent, isolated DD. This indicates the common coexistence of systolic and diastoli