Sensitive detection of myocardial contraction abnormality in chronic hemodialysis patients by ultrasonic tissue characterization with integrated backscatter

Since acoustic properties of the myocardium are sensitive to the myocardial structure and the contractile conditions of myocyte, the authors evaluated cardiac dysfunction based on the integrated ultrasonic backscatter in 18 hemodialysis (HD) patients (duration: 102 ±84 months, mean age: 57.6 ±9.7 years) and 11 age-matched normals. The cyclic variation of integrated backscatter (CV-IB) at interventricular septum (IVS) and left ventricular posterior wall (PW) was measured and compared with percent fractional short ening (%FS) and percent wall thickening (%Th). The CV-IB of HD patients was smaller than that of control subjects (IVS: 6.2 ± 1.1 dB vs 8.2 ± 1.1 dB, p = 0. 0003 and PW: 8.4 ±2.2 vs 10.3 ±1.3, p = 0.025). No significant difference was observed in %FS and %Th between HD patients and control subjects. In HD, the ratio of velocities of early diastolic inflow (E) to late atrial inflow was decreased (0.7 ±0.2 vs 1.1 ±0.7, p = 0.049) and decel eration time of E was prolonged significantly (200 ±28 msec ...