Background

There is an increasing interest in echocardiographic strain (ε) measurements for the assessment of ventricular myocardial function in children; however, pediatric nomograms remain limited. Our aim was to establish pediatric nomograms for the left ventricular (LV) and the right ventricular (RV) ε measured by two-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography (2D-STE) in a large cohort of healthy children prospectively enrolled.

Methods

Echocardiographic measurements included STE LV longitudinal and circumferential and RV longitudinal global end-systolic ε. Age, weight, height, heart rate (HR), and body surface area (BSA) were used as independent variables in different analyses to predict the mean values of each measurement. Echocardiograms were performed by Philips-iE33 systems (Philips, Bothell, WA) and offline measurements on Philips-Q-Lab-9.

Results

In all, 721 subjects (age 31 days to 17 years; 48% female) were studied. Low coefficients of determination (R²) were noted among all of the ε parameters evaluated and adjusted for age, weight, height, BSA, and HR (i.e., R² all ≤ 0.10; range, 0.01-0.088). This hampered the possibility of performing z-scores with a sufficient reliability. Thus, we are limited to presenting data as mean values (±SD) stratified for age groups and divided by gender. LV longitudinal ε values decreased with age (P < .001), while no significant age-related variations were noted for RV longitudinal ε. A significant base-to-apex (lowest to highest) gradient in circumferential LV ε values was noted at all ages (P < .001).

Conclusions

We report pediatric echocardiographic normative data for 2D-STE for the LV and RV ε by using vendor-specific software. Our results confirm previous observations, showing only little variations of strain parameters with age and gender.

中文翻译：

---

二维斑点跟踪超声心动图对健康的白种人意大利儿童的左室和右室收缩压的标准数据

背景

对于评估儿童心室心肌功能的超声心动图应变（ε）测量，人们越来越感兴趣；但是，儿科列线图仍然有限。我们的目的是通过二维散斑跟踪超声心动图（2D-STE）在预期纳入的一大批健康儿童中建立左心室（LV）和右心室（RV）ε的儿科列线图。

方法

超声心动图测量包括STE LV纵向和周围以及RV纵向整体收缩末期ε。在不同的分析中，年龄，体重，身高，心率（HR）和体表面积（BSA）被用作自变量，以预测每次测量的平均值。超声心动图由Philips-iE33系统（Philips，Bothell，WA）执行，并在Philips-Q-Lab-9上进行离线测量。

结果

总共研究了721名受试者（年龄31天至17岁；女性48％）。在针对年龄，体重，身高，BSA和HR进行评估和调整的所有ε参数中，注意到较低的测定系数（R ²）（即R ²均≤0.10；范围为0.01-0.088）。这阻碍了以足够的可靠性执行z得分的可能性。因此，我们仅限于将数据显示为按年龄组分层并除以性别的平均值（±SD）。左室纵向ε值随年龄增长而降低（P  <.001），而右室纵向ε无明显的年龄相关变化。各个年龄段的人均LVε值存在明显的从基点到顶点（从最低到最高）的梯度（P <.001）。

结论

我们通过使用供应商特定的软件报告2D-STE的儿科超声心动图标准数据，用于LV和RVε。我们的结果证实了先前的观察结果，表明应变参数仅随年龄和性别变化很小。