Diastolic function abnormalities in active rheumatoid arthritis evaluation by conventional Doppler and tissue Doppler: relation with duration of disease

The aim of this study was to evaluate left ventricular diastolic function in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis (RA), analyzing conventional Doppler and tissue Doppler echocardiographic imaging (TDI) which is a new echocardiographic application, with special regard to disease duration. Fifty-two patients with active RA and 47 healthy persons were included in this study. Duration of disease ranged from 3 to 324 months (mean 76+/-85 months). All patients and the control group were evaluated by M-mod, two-dimensional, conventional Doppler echocardiography and TDI. Among conventional Doppler transvalvular mitral flow parameters, late diastolic flow velocity (A) and deceleration time (DT) values were higher in patients with RA than that in the control group (p