Atrial systolic function in left heart failure

The authors have developed Doppler mitral flow velocity (mfv) indices to estimate peak atrio-ventricular pressure gradient (pg), its mean and peak rate of change with time (pag and mag) to assess left atrial contractility. The authors´ indices were measured from the digitised mfv signals which were fitted to splines of polynomials in time to represent mitral inflow during atrial systole in 4 normals (GpA) and 10 patients with stable NYHA grade 3 heart failure (GpB). The means (standard deviations) for pg, pag and mag for GpA versus GpB were 4.04 (1.04) mm Hg, 417 (154) and 211.5 (79.7) mm Hg s^-1 respectively versus 2.39 (1.06) mm Hg, 117 (111) and 43.5 (34) mm Hg s ^-1 respectively. Mean indices pg, pag and mag were significantly greater for GpA, t values at the 95% confidence interval=2.65, 3.91 and 5.73 respectively and p values=0.021, 0.003 and 0.0001 respectively