TY - JOUR AU - De Vecchis, Renato AU - Paccone, Andrea AU - Di Maio, Marco PY - 2019/12/17 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Atrial mechanical hypofunction after electrical cardioversion of persistent or long-lasting persistent atrial fibrillation: a retrospective cohort study JF - Monaldi Archives for Chest Disease JA - Monaldi Arch Chest Dis VL - 89 IS - 3 SE - Cardiology - Original Articles DO - 10.4081/monaldi.2019.1178 UR - https://www.monaldi-archives.org/macd/article/view/1178 SP - AB - <p>In the present retrospective cohort study, we have evaluated the missed or delayed atrial mechanical recovery in a population of patients with persistent or long-lasting persistent AF who achieved restoration of sinus rhythm on the ECG by electrical cardioversion (ECV). <strong>&nbsp;</strong>The endpoint of our&nbsp;&nbsp; study was&nbsp;&nbsp; the failure to recover the normal mechanics of the left atrium.&nbsp; Inclusion criterion was the persistent or long-lasting persistent atrial fibrillation successfully treated by means of&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;ECV , provided that&nbsp; a pertinent documentation&nbsp; was made available, comprising ECG, conventional 2D echo-color-Doppler and&nbsp;&nbsp; speckle tracking echocardiography(STE)&nbsp; evaluation, with also a STE assessment&nbsp; of the atria at the days 1, 30 and 90 &nbsp;from the ECV freely available within&nbsp; the clinical record&nbsp; of the patient. Out of a total of 80 patients with persistent or long-standing persistent AF, retrospectively enrolled, as many as&nbsp; 22.5% of them did not achieve the normalization of their&nbsp; atrial STE profile, even though they had been converted to sinus rhythm on the ECG by means of ECV.&nbsp; The building of ROC curves allowed us to establish that early measurements of global atrial strain could serve to predict&nbsp; both the risk of failure to recover the atrial mechanical function and the one of AF relapses over a 12 month follow-up. The&nbsp;&nbsp; values of 18% and 17% were also calculated&nbsp; to serve as cut off values, respectively,&nbsp; for the risk&nbsp; of atrial mechanical dysfunction and for the risk of AF&nbsp; relapses over a 12 month follow-up. Failure to recover the atrial reservoir function can accompany a restoration of sinus rhythm on the ECG in patients with long-standing persistent AF. In this case, a serial STE evaluation could be useful to evaluate the atrial hypofunction over time.</p> ER -