Mechanical dyssynchrony assessment with speckle tracking echocardiography in patients before cardiac resynchronization therapy

Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) represents one of the treatment used in congestive heart failure. Current guidelines for this therapy include: widening of the QRS complex, left bundle branch block, NYHA functional class, ejection fraction. However, CRT is not effective for everyone. Unfortunately, there are some patients with heart failure who do not benefit from CRT therapy. For these reasons, a large number of studies have evaluated clinical utility of two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography (2D STE). Mechanical dyssynchrony assessed by imaging methods, such as STE, might be able to lead to a better selection of patients who are candidates to CRT and can predict response to it. However it is not known, which potential dyssynchrony parameter is a most promising for predicting benefits from cardiac resynchronization therapy.