Poor ventricular function in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) on dialysis has been described previously.5) ESRD patients often encounter

chronic volume and pressure overload. learn more higher incidence of ischemic heart disease is also associated with poor cardiac function in ESRD patients. Neurohormonal activation or uremic toxicity is also suggested as cause of poor cardiac function.6) Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical After kidney transplantation, LV systolic function represented as LVEF increased in more than 86% of patients and was associated with an improvement in functional status in more than two-thirds of patients. Even in patients with severe LV systolic dysfunction (LVEF less than 20%), most of patients Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical showed LVEF improvement after kidney transplantation.5) In this work by Deng et al.,4) LVEF increased as previous other clinical studies and but LV torsion was also increased. Therefore change of torsion is true in this study; however clinical implication is hard to be understood for clinician based on this study. Measurement of Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical ventricular torsion can provide information for detecting and follow-up of cardiac abnormality as authors insisted; however the time and cost for measurement are much higher than conventional parameters. Selection of specific subgroup of patients is

needed to apply this “additional” parameter which overwhelms LVEF. Preserved LVEF group with ventricular hypertrophy with diastolic Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical dysfunction in Doppler parameter can be possible candidate in ESRD, because in previous studies, LV torsion was shown to be generated power for ventricular diastolic suction and early diastolic filling.7) Or future studies is needed to evaluate LV torsion as indicator of to improve LVEF in pre-transplantation work-up (or to select the poor prognostic groups) beyond LVEF and other Doppler parameter. Furthermore, LV torsion analysis technique based on 2D speckle tracking has several unsolved problems by itself. First Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of all, determining levels of base and apex have great influence to result of LV torsion. Far apex has higher rotation and when true apex is missed, lower rotation parameter can be derived.

Little change of level of plane can distort the final results. Second, there is ARCHIVES OF INTERNAL MEDICINE longitudinal motion of basal LV septum. 2D speckle tracking methods based on 2D images, and level of LV base can moves through 2D plane. To prevent artifacts or to improve quality of basal rotation curve, three dimensional (3D) speckle tracking has been developed and introduced. However, limited image quality and complex analysis process is problems to be solved. In recent study about feasibility and reproducibility of LV rotation,8) feasibility of 2D speckle tracking was low in elderly individuals in clinical setting. Reproducibility was poor between different version of software even in 3D echocardiography and agreement was better when using newer software.