Echocardiographic alterations in systemic sclerosis: A longitudinal study
Section snippets
Patients
The study group consisted of 77 consecutive patients (71 women and 6 men; mean age 54.4 years) with SSc diagnosed according to the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria (18), admitted to the Rheumatology Unit at the Second University of Naples. Table 1 lists the main epidemiological and clinical features of these patients on entering the study. They were divided into 3 subsets according to the classification of Giordano and coworkers (19, 20, 21). The disease duration was assumed as
Data at presentation and comparison with controls
The main baseline echocardiographic and echo-Doppler parameters recorded in the 77 patients and 45 controls are reported in Table 2. Higher values of peak A (P < 0.001) and lower values of peak E (P = 0.02), with consequent reduction in the E/A ratio (P < 0.001) and a prolonged IRP and DT (each P < 0.001), were found in SSc patients than in controls (significance not reported in the table). An inverted E/A ratio was found in 23/77 SSc patients and 1/45 control subject (P < 0.001). Pericardial
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first long-term longitudinal study of echocardiographic alterations in patients with longstanding slowly evolving SSc. The baseline prevalence of anatomical alterations was similar to that reported in the majority of previous studies (5, 6, 9, 14, 15, 17). Moreover, we confirmed that LV systolic function was generally well preserved (28). but LV diastolic dysfunction was frequent (23/77). At the end of the follow-up, diastolic dysfunction occurred in 6 additional
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