Non Invasive Assesment of 42 Cases of Dilated Cardiomyopathy (Idiopathic)

Abstract

Introduction:
The diagnosis of Cardiovascular disease by history, examination of pulse wave, inspect i on, palpation, apical cardiac movements, ausculation of the fieart sounds and murmurs, is supplemented by external graphic recordings as an improvement since long. Systolic Time Intervals (STI’s) and Diastolic Time Intervals (DTI’s) are assessment techniques for the Cardiace performance, which is influenced by the end diastolic fiber length, mean aortic pressure, myocardial contractility, heart rate and contraction synergy.

Material & Method:
Patient Selection.•
Heart muscle disease has divergent etiology of known and unknown origin. Patients with cardiomegaly, with no evidence of Rheumatic heart disease, coronary heart disease, Hypertension, Left to right shunts and any other congenital or acquired cardiac detects, were subjected to ECG, X-Ray chest & Echo graphic recording for exclusion of secondary etiological factors. These cases were labelled as idiopathic dilated cardiomvopathy for further assessment of tile cardiac function.

Results:

General Information.
Initially 50 cases were included in the study, out of which 8 had to be dropped because of intraventricular conduction defects (Table I). 1st degree AV block was present 24 cases (57%), AF in 10 cases and remaining 8 had regular sinus rhythm, without any conduction defect.

Discussion:

Wiggers delieniated various phases of the cardiac cycle long ago, and it is since then that the systolic and diastolic time intervals as drawn by using ECG, PCG, ACG and carotid pulse wave tracings, have been used for the assessment of ventricular performance. STIs refer to the temporal sequence of ventricular events in systole, and the DTIs refer to the, dynamic changes during diastole.Cardiomyopathies with divergent etiologies, known or unknown are more frequently diagnosed than previously, due to better diagnostic facilities. Voluminous work has been done in the past to find out reliable left ventricular performance indices, could be used as a specific, sensitive and reliable measure for the judgment of L.V. function. Many of them together can indicate altered L.V. function.