Relationship between Myocardial Right Ventricular Relaxation Time and Pulmonary Artery Pressure in Patients with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

Introduction: Recent developments in echocardiography made assessing pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in the heart, a suitable choice. This study aimed to investigate the association of myocardial right ventricular relaxation time and systolic pulmonary artery pressure (SPAP) in PAH patients.Materials and Methods: The present study evaluated 74 patients with PAH (n=49) and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (n=25). All patients underwent transthoracic echocardiography. We evaluated the right ventricular (RV) function s echocardiographic parameters, including IVRT, IVCT, S, E, A, S’, E’, A’, ET, DT, TAPSE, FAC, and SPAP.Results: We found no significant differences in age and gender between the two studied groups (p gt;0.05). However, we observed a significant difference in IVRT, IVCT, E’, A’ (p=0.004), A, S’, DT, TAPSE, FAC and SPSP (p lt;0.001 for all cases) between two studied groups. Unlike the control group, we revealed a significant correlation between S’ and E’ (r=0.45, p= lt;0.001), S’ and A’ (r=0.66, p= lt;0.001), S’ and FAC (r=0.3, p=0.035), A and A’(r=0.4, p=0.004), TAPSE and FAC (r=0.82, p= lt;0.001), TAPSE and SPAP (r= -0.43, p=0.002), MPI and A (r= -0.35, p=0.013), MPI and ET (r= -0.72, p= lt;0.001), E/A and E/E’(r=0.47, p= lt;0.001), and BSA and S’ (r= -0.3, p=0.011). In addition, no meaningful association was found between SPAP and IVRT and IVCT (p gt;0.05).Conclusion: Our findings revealed that IVRT and IVCT might not be affected by the SPAP and, therefore, could be used in the assessment of right ventricular function in patients with PAH.