Tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion does not correlate with right ventricular ejection fraction in patients with hypoplastic left heart syndrome after Fontan palliation

Abstract

Tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE) reflects longitudinal myocardial shortening, the main component of right ventricular (RV) contraction in normal hearts. To date, TAPSE has not been extensively studied in patients with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) and systemic RVs after Fontan palliation. This retrospective study investigated HLHS patients after Fontan with cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) performed between 1 January 2010 and 1 August 2012 and transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE) performed within 6 months of CMR. The maximal apical displacement of the lateral tricuspid valve annulus was measured on CMR (using four-chamber cine images) and on TTE (using two-dimensional apical views). To create TTE-TAPSE z-scores, published reference data were used. Intra- and interobserver variability was tested with analysis of variance. Inter-technique agreement of TTE and CMR was tested with Bland-Altman analysis. In this study, 30 CMRs and TTEs from 29 patients were analyzed. The age at CMR was 14.1 ± 7.1 years, performed 11.9 ± 7.8 years after Fontan. For CMR-TAPSE, the intraclass correlation coefficients for inter- and intraobserver variability were 0.89 and 0.91, respectively. The TAPSE measurements were 0.57 ± 0.2 cm on CMR and 0.70 ± 0.2 cm on TTE (TTE-TAPSE z score, -8.7 ± 1.0). The mean difference in TAPSE between CMR and TTE was -0.13 cm [95 % confidence interval (CI) -0.21 to -0.05], with 95 % limits of agreement (-0.55 to 0.29 cm). The study showed no association between CMR-TAPSE and RVEF (R = 0.08; p = 0.67). In patients with HLHS after Fontan, TAPSE is reproducible on CMR and TTE, with good agreement between the two imaging methods. Diminished TAPSE suggests impaired longitudinal shortening in the systemic RV. However, TAPSE is not a surrogate for RVEF in this study population.

Fig. 1

The mean difference in tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE) between cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) and transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE) was −0.13 cm, with 95 % limits of agreement of −0.55 to +0.29 (SD ± 0.04 cm; 95 % CI −0.05 to −0.21)