International Journal of STD & AIDS > Volume 19, Number 4 > Pp. 227-231

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Original research articles

Assessment of cardiac function with Doppler tissue imaging in asymptomatic HIV-infected patients

Apostolos Karavidas MD ^*, Manolis Foukarakis MD ^*, George Lazaros MD  , Maria Chini MD , Ioannis Fotiadis MD ^*, Sophia Arapi MD ^*, Theodoros Gialernios MD , Nicolaos Potamitis MD ^*, Panos Gargalianos MD , Evangellos Matsakas MD ^* and Christodoulos Stefanadis MD 

^* Department of Cardiology, Athens General Hospital; First Cardiology Department, School of Medicine, University of Athens, Hippokration Hospital; Infectious Diseases Unit, Athens General Hospital, Athens, Greece

Correspondence to: Dr George A Lazaros, Achilleos 31, P. Faliron, 175 62 Athens, Greece Email: glaz35{at}hotmail.com

Doppler tissue imaging (DTI) is a useful tool for the detection of subtle systolic function abnormalities related to the longitudinal contraction. We assessed left ventricular (LV) systolic function with DTI in 45 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients without any heart-related symptoms and in 30 healthy control subjects. Although conventional echocardiography showed no differences between groups, DTI revealed lower peak systolic velocities in group A patients when compared with group B ones (Sms: 8.84 ± 0.94 cm/s vs. 9.42 ± 0.84 cm/s, respectively, P < 0.001 and Sml: 9.58 ± 1.86 cm/s vs. 10.78 ± 2.07 cm/s P = 0.003). In group A patients, both peak systolic myocardial velocities at the septal (Sms) and lateral mitral annulus (Sml) correlated with CD4 lymphocyte count (P = 0.034 and 0.009, respectively). We conclude that pulse wave DTI reveals subtle and non-otherwise detectable abnormalities of the longitudinal LV contractile function in asymptomatic patients with positive HIV serology. DTI study should potentially be expanded in the population of HIV-infected patients, aiming at an early identification of LV systolic dysfunction.

Key Words: Doppler tissue imaging • HIV infection • left ventricular long-axis contraction • systolic dysfunction

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