Evaluation of diagnostic power of tissue Doppler Echocardiography for assessment of cardiac iron overload in patients with thalassemia major

Background and Aim: Iron overload in patients with thalassemia major is one of the most important complications of this disease and its cardiac complications are the most important causes of death in these patients.MRI T2 is the perfect device to assess the amount of iron deposited in the heart of thalassemia patients, but it causes waste of time and also is an expensive diagnostic method. Tissue Doppler echocardiography is the newer method for this evaluation.Herein, this study was conducted to determine efficacy and specificity of tissue Doppler echocardiography in the assessment of heart iron overload in patients with thalassemia major. Materials Methods: It was a diagnostic power assessment research?? performed on 50 patients with thalassemia major aged ≥ 15 years old that had been visited in BoualiSina Hospital in sari, Iran. After the study was explained and patients agreed to participate, written informed consent was obtained. All the patients underwent MRI T2* and tissue Doppler echocardiography results were obtained. The collected data were processed with SPSS 16 and specificity and efficacy of tissue Doppler echocardiography were obtained. In all analysis, P value 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Result: Patients were divided into four groups: normal amount of iron in the heart tissue, mild, moderate and severe. There was a good compatibility between results of MRI T2* and tissue Doppler echocardiography. Conclusion: we can offer that tissue Doppler echocardiography is a worthy method for evaluating cardiac complications of iron overload in patients with thalassemia major.