Different hemodynamic stress of the ascending aorta wall in patients with bicuspid and tricuspid aortic valve.

It is unclear whether ascending aorta dilation in patients with bicuspid aortic valve is caused by abnormal hemodynamics or by a common developmental defect of the aortic valve and aortic wall. We performed an echocardiographic study to examine the differences in hemodynamic stress at the ascending aorta in patients with bicuspid and tricuspid aortic valve. We studied prospectively 58 consecutive patients referred for preoperative echocardiographic examination with aortic valve stenosis and either bicuspid or tricuspid valve and an ascending aortic diameter of </=4.5 cm. Echocardiographic examination was performed from the parasternal long-axis view using ALOKA SDD 5.500 (Aloka, Tokyo) with 3.5 MHz probe. With aortic wall tissue Doppler imaging we obtained wall motion velocity patterns from the anterolateral and posteromedial region of the ascending aorta. The tissue Doppler examination showed a significantly higher peak systolic wall velocity of the anterolateral region of the ascending aorta in patients with bicuspid aortic valve (12.2 +/- 4.3 cm/sec vs. 8.8 +/- 2.6 cm/sec, p = 0.047). We conclude that in patients with bicuspid aortic valve and aortic valve stenosis the anterolateral region of the ascending aorta is subject to greater hemodynamic stress than in patients with tricuspid aortic valve.