Comparison of three-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography and two-dimensional echocardiography for evaluation of left atrial size and function in healthy volunteers (results from the MAGYAR-Healthy study)

Objective: Noninvasive accurate assessment of left atrial (LA) size and function is an essential requirement in daily clinical practice. Real time three-dimensional (3D) echocardiography (RT3DE) with direct volumetric method has been found to be a highly accurate and reproducible noninvasive tool for the evaluation of LA dimensions and functional properties. Three-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography (3DSTE) has just been introduced for volumetric assessments, which uses different, as called "block-matching" algorithm by strain analysis. This study was designed to compare two-dimensional (2D) echocardiography with 3DSTE for calculation of LA volumes and assessment of LA functional properties in healthy subjects.

Methods: This study comprised of randomly selected 35 healthy subjects (40.9 ± 10.9 years, 20 men) in sinus rhythm, they all had undergone standard transthoracic 2D echocardiographic Doppler study extended with 3DSTE.

Results: Two-dimensional echocardiography- and 3DSTE-derived minimum (Vmin ) and maximum (Vmax ) LA volumes and LA volume before atrial contraction (Vpre A ) did not differ significantly. Calculated functional LA properties were also compared. Good correlations were found between both techniques for Vmax (r = 0.93, P < 0.0001), Vmin (r = 0.62, P < 0.0001), and Vpre A (r = 0.74, P < 0.0001).

Conclusions: It may be stated that 3DSTE seems to be feasible in detection of cyclic changes in LA volumes and calculation of its functional properties is comparable to 2D echocardiography.