Does Echo Have a Role in Predicting Benefit from CRT?

New data show promise for left-ventricular dyssynchrony as an echocardiographic predictor of response to cardiac resynchronization therapy.

Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) benefits patients with chronic systolic heart failure (NYHA class III–IV) and a QRS duration ≥120 ms. However, most CRT studies have included only patients with these wide QRS durations. Furthermore, only 60% to 80% of subjects in CRT studies respond to CRT, 20% to 50% of heart failure patients with narrower QRS complexes have echocardiographic evidence of left-ventricular dyssynchrony, and echocardiographic measures have shown the potential to outperform QRS duration in predicting response to CRT (Journal Watch Cardiology Mar 4 2005). Given these facts, two research groups have used tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) to compare short-term outcomes after CRT between patients with wide QRS complexes (≥120 ms…

Reviewing Author

Mark S. Link, MD

Does Echo Have a Role in Predicting Benefit from CRT?

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Reviewing Author