Left Ventricular Twist and Untwist in Patients Undergoing Elective Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

BACKGROUND: Left ventricular (LV) twist and untwist plays important roles in physiological adaptation and development of clinically relevant cardiac diseases. AIMS: To assess LV twist and untwist in patients undergoing elective percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) by two-dimensional (2D) speckle tracking echocardiography (STE). SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Fifty patients who had stable angina pectoris and/or abnormal result from noninvasive stress tests were enrolled after undergoing elective PCI. Conventional and 2D STE were performed before elective PCI and after 3 months. RESULTS: There was no significant systolic improvement in conventional echocardiography. However, there was a significant diastolic improvement after elective PCI as higher E, E/A, e` and lower E/e` (P < 0.034, <0.042, 0.015, and 0.033, respectively). In addition, there was a statistically significant improvement of STE-derived systolic parameters as regard higher global longitudinal strain, peak twist, and torsion (P value 0.009, 0.009, and < 0.001, respectively). Furthermore, there was significant improvement of STE-derived diastolic parameters as higher peak untwist, recoil, and lower time to peak untwist (P value 0.013, 0.001, and 0.004, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: LV and untwist parameters were improved before most of conventional echocardiographic parameters in postrevascularization of stable coronary artery disease.