Left ventricular twist and shear-angle in patients with mitral regurgitation

Background Mitral regurgitation(MR) is a common valvular disorder that foments left ventricular(LV) dysfunction. The study of LV twist during the progression of MR is limited to studies performed with ultrasound/echo(1-3) in human subjects or animal studies(4), which suggest that LV twist decreases when MR is present. LV circumferential-longitudinal shear angle (CL-shear angle) has been proposed as a more reproducible measure of LV rotational mechanics, but has not been evaluated in patients with MR. We hypothesized that both LV twist and CL-shear angle would decrease with severity of MR.