Analysis of left ventricular function in patients with heart failure undergoing cardiac resynchronization.

BACKGROUND

The gold standard surgical treatment for heart failure is cardiac transplantation, however, due to difficulties of this treatment, other surgical proposals have been reported, including the implantation of cardiac resynchronizer.

OBJECTIVE

To analyze the left ventricular function by echocardiography in patients with advanced heart failure with interventricular dyssynchrony undergone implantation of cardiac resynchronizer.

METHODS

Between June 2006 and June 2012, 24 patients with average age of 61.5 ± 11 years were evaluated, carriers of advanced congestive heart failure functional class III and IV (NYHA), interventricular dyssynchrony and optimal drug therapy, and submitted implantation of cardiac resynchronizer and postoperative echocardiographically evaluated in six months.

RESULTS

There was significant improvement of the analyzed echocardiography parameters. The average left ventricular diastolic diameter decreased from 69.6 ± 9.8 mm to 66.8 ± 8.8 mm, systolic diameters from 58.6 ± 8.8 mm to 52.7 ± 8.8 mm, and ejection fraction, average of 31 ± 8% to 40 ± 7% with level of significance, respectively, of 0.019, 0.0004 and 0.0002, statistically significant with a significance level of 0.05.

CONCLUSION

There was a significant improvement of left ventricular function analyzed by echocardiography at six months, in patients with advanced heart failure undergone implantation of cardiac resynchronizer.