Longitudinal strain with speckle-tracking echocardiography predicts electroanatomic substrate for ventricular tachycardia in nonischemic cardiomyopathy patients.

Background: Longitudinal strain (LS) derived from speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) corresponds to regions of scar in ischemic cardiomyopathy.

Objective: We investigated if regional LS abnormalities correlate with scar location and scar burden, identified using high-density electroanatomic mapping (EAM) in nonischemic cardiomyopathy (NICM).

Methods: Fifty NICM patients with ventricular tachycardia (VT) underwent echocardiography; multilayer (endocardial, midmyocardial, and epicardial) regional LS and global LS (GLS) were evaluated prior to EAM for detection of low-voltage scar. Patients were divided into 3 groups by EAM left ventricular scar location: (1) anteroseptal (group 1, n = 20); (2) inferolateral (group 2, n = 20); and (3) epicardial scar (group 3; n = 10). We correlated (1) location of scar to regional LS and (2) regional strain and GLS to scar percentage.

Results: Regional LS abnormalities correlated with EAM scar in all groups. Segmental impaired LS and low voltage on EAM demonstrated concordance with scar in ∼75% or its border zone in 25% of segments. In groups 1 and 2, endocardial GLS showed a strong linear correlation with endocardial bipolar scar percentage (r = 0.79, 0.75 for groups 1 and 2, respectively; P < .001), whereas midmyocardial GLS correlated with unipolar scar percentage (r = 0.82, 0.78 for groups 1 and 2, respectively; P < .001). In group 3, epicardial regional LS and GLS correlated with epicardial bipolar scar percentage (r = 0.72, P < .001).

Conclusion: Regional abnormalities on LS predict scar location on EAM mapping in patients with NICM. Moreover, global and regional LS correlate with scar percentage. STE could be used as a noninvasive tool for localizing and quantifying scar prior to EAM.