Results
Forty-six MS patients (23 severe and 23 very severe) and 23 healthy
controls were recruited into our study. The mean age of the participants
was 42.49 ± 13.1 years old (ranging from 19 to 74 years) and 68.1%
(n=47) of the subjects were female. The demographic information of the
participants are summarized in table 1. Mean FAC was significantly
higher in healthy subjects compared with MS patients
(p<0.001). However, no meaningful differences were observed
between severe and very severe MS patients (p=0.97). Table 2 shows the
comparison of RV functional parameters between the study groups. There
were significant differences in S’ values within groups (p=0.008) using
one-way ANOVA test. Further analysis by Post-Hoc Tukey test showed that
S’ was significantly lower in patients with very severe MS compared with
severe MS cases (p=0.017) and healthy individuals (p=0.012, table 2).
There was a gradual decline in TAPSE value from the healthy subjects to
very severe MS patients (p<0.001, table 2). Furthermore, RVFWS
was significantly higher in healthy subjects in comparison with severe
and very severe MS patients (27.4 ± 2.7 vs. 13.6 ± 7.2 and 13.4 ± 5.2,
respectively; p<0.001). Average PAP values were considerably
higher in all MS patients, but displayed no discrepancies among severe
and very severe subjects.
Pearson and Spearman’s correlation tests were used to investigate
possible associations of MVA or PAP values with other echocardiographic
parameters. MVA values showed significant correlation with TAPSE and S’
values in patients with MS (r=0.55 and r=0.43, p <0.001 and
p=0.004, respectively; shown in table 3). Moreover, the correlation
analysis between PAP and other factors showed a substantial connection
with FAC and RVFWS values (p<0.05).