REVIEW  NOVELTIES IN CARDIAC SURGERY 

Minerva Cardioangiologica 2020 October;68(5):489-96

DOI: 10.23736/S0026-4725.20.05251-2

Copyright © 2020 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Left ventricular global longitudinal strain and cardiac surgical outcomes

Lisa Q. RONG ¹ ✉, Peter J. NEUBURGER ², Jiwon KIM ³, Richard B. DEVEREUX ³

¹ Department of Anesthesiology, Weill Cornell Medicine/New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, USA; ² Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Care and Pain Medicine, NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, NY, USA; ³ Department of Cardiology, Weill Cornell Medicine/New York Presbyterian, New York, NY, USA

Global longitudinal strain (GLS) has emerged as a valuable diagnostic and prognostic tool for evaluating left ventricular (LV) function. GLS has been shown to be a more sensitive marker of LV dysfunction than LV ejection fraction alone and have prognostic impact in non-surgical cardiac populations. GLS, is validated, reproducible, and easily obtained from 2-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography. While there is strong evidence for using GLS in clinical decision-making in non-surgical populations, there is less summarized evidence on using GLS in the cardiac surgical population. This review combines the evidence on the implications of using baseline transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) and transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) GLS in cardiac surgical populations including ischemic and structural heart disease to determine surgical outcomes. We found that results seem promising on the prognostic utility of LV strain in cardiac surgical populations. However due to the variability of study populations and outcomes, and modalities (TTE versus TEE), further research on normal versus abnormal values for different surgical populations, as well potential treatment options that may modify and potentially decrease surgical risk for those with abnormal GLS are needed.

KEY WORDS: Echocardiography; Ventricular function, left; Thoracic surgery