Abstract:

Heart failure (KY) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Many studies have shown that KY and depression are often associated and that depression is associated with KY symptoms. In this study, we aimed to compare the values of the left ventricular global longitudinal strain (GS) with the degree of depressive symptoms using two-dimensional speckle tracking ecocardiography. Our tool and method study is a cutting-edge study in which 135 patients with a diagnosis of KY (EF<35) were included in the cardiological clinic between December 2012 and February 2016. The symptoms of depression were assessed by Beck Depression Inventory-II. Patients with mental disorders and other neurological problems and patients who were unable to sign the approval form were dismissed. Depression patients were classified as follows: scores between 0-13 are minimal (group 1), scores between 14-19 are light (group 2), scores between 20-28 are medium (group 3) and scores between 29-63 are serious (group 4). For the evaluation of GS in the ecocardiography, the left ventricular apical length, 4 and 2 spacecraft images were taken from the basal, mid-papillary and apical levels while the frame rate was between 40 and 80 frames/s. The average age in the Study population was 64±10 years (54.8 percent of women). There was no difference between age and gender. The New York Heart Association’s average of patients in Group 4 was statistically significantly higher than patients in Group 1, 2 and 3. The analysis between groups found statistically significant differences between groups (p<0.001). The post-hoc analysis observed that this difference was derived from group 4, with GS values significantly lower in group 4 compared to other groups (respectively, 19.1±2.3, 17.5±3.1, 17.1±2.3 and 15.2±3.9, p<0.001). The result is of clinical importance in patients with depression. In patients with KY, disrupted GS depression may be associated with the severity of depression.