Assessment of Left Ventricular Diastolic Dysfunction with a New Method: Tissue Doppler Imaging

Diastofic dysfunction is frequent in patients w ith congestive heart failure and hypertension. lt can be defined as "an abnormafity of ventricufar filfing with low pressw·e !ike with normal cardiac function and compensatory increased atrial pressure". Diastofic dysfunction has 3 eliffereni categories: impaired refaxation, pseudonormafization and restrictive1Jattem. Althouglı a lot of invasive and noninvasive methods coufd be used, cfassicaf pulsed wave Doppler (PWD) method which inciuc/e mitralflow and pufmonary venousflow are the most used nıethods for assessment of diastofic dysfunction. Nonethefess, PWD is affectedfrom prefoad and the re are s ome difficufties distinction about of normal from pseudonormalization. Due to these limitations, the re is necessity of new method for accurate assesment of diasıolic dysfunction. Tissue Doppler lmaging (TDI) is a new method which alfows assessment of systolic and diastolic function of myocardiunı and mitral annufus. Diastolicfunction coufd be easify evaluated with TDI independentfy from prefoad. This method alfows differential diagnosis of diastolic dysfunction from constrictive pericarditis and restrictive cardiomyopathy and af so distinction of normal and pseudonormafization which it coufd be done by using PWD. Therefore, TDJ method recently has been repfaced to traditionaf methods.