Usefulness of Diastolic Dominant Pulmonary Vein Flow to Predict Hospitalization for Heart Failure and Mortality in Ambulatory Patients With Coronary Heart Disease (from the Heart and Soul Study)

Diastolic dysfunction is usually identified by the combination of characteristic mitral and pulmonary vein flow patterns. However, obtaining a complete set of echocardiographic parameters can be technically difficult and data may conflict. We hypothesized that as a stand-alone variable, (ventricular) diastolic dominant pulmonary vein flow would predict heart failure (HF) hospitalizations and cardiovascular death. Standard transthoracic echocardiograms were obtained in 906 subjects from the Heart and Soul Study, a prospective study of the effects of depression on coronary heart disease. Pulmonary vein flow pattern was determined using the dominant velocity–time integral. Cardiac events were determined by 2 independent adjudicators, and Cox proportional hazards models were used. Systolic dominant pulmonary vein flow was present in 89% of subjects, and diastolic dominant, in the remaining 11%. During an average 4.1 years of follow-up, subjects with diastolic dominant pulmonary vein flow had a 25% rate of HF hospitalization and 9% rate of cardiovascular death. After multivariate adjustment including left ventricular ejection fraction, diastolic pulmonary vein flow was associated with a 3-fold risk of HF hospitalization (p = 0.001) and a 2-fold risk of HF hospitalization or death (p = 0.004). In conclusion, diastolic dominant pulmonary vein flow pattern was a stand-alone predictor of adverse cardiac events, and its presence was associated with significantly higher rates of HF hospitalizations and cardiovascular death.