Quantitative assessment of systolic left ventricular function with speckle-tracking echocardiography in adult patients with repaired aortic coarctation

Despite successful aortic coarctation (CoA) repair, systemic hypertension often recurs which may influence left ventricular (LV) function. We aimed to detect early LV dysfunction using LV global longitudinal strain (GLS) in adults with repaired CoA, and to identify associations with patient and echocardiographic characteristics. In this cross-sectional study, patients with repaired CoA and healthy controls were recruited prospectively. All subjects underwent echocardiography, ECG and blood sampling within 1 day. With speckle-tracking echocardiography, we assessed LV GLS on the apical four-, three- and two-chamber views. We included 150 subjects: 75 patients (57 % male, age 33.4 ± 12.8 years, age at repair 2.5 [IQR: 0.1–11.1] years) and 75 healthy controls of similar sex and age. LV GLS was lower