Arq. Bras. Cardiol. 2020; 114(4): 645-646
Heart Transplantation and the “The Secret Chamber”: How Echocardiographic Assessment of the Right Ventricle Can Reveal Acute Cell Rejection
Henrique Turin Moreira
, Minna Moreira Dias Romano
This Short Editorial is referred by the Research article "Impaired Right Ventricular Function in Heart Transplant Rejection".
Although heart transplantation (Tx) has achieved great technical and scientific evolution in recent decades, acute cell rejection (ACR) still represents an important threat to patients submitted to this procedure. Acute rejection screening protocols associated with early immunosuppressive therapy are essential for Tx success. However, endomyocardial biopsy, although expensive and invasive, is still a reference method for the screening of ACR.
ACR is related to incipient damage in myocardial function, which may not be detected by conventional echocardiographic techniques for myocardial function analysis. Myocardial deformation, analyzed by the speckle tracking technique, is able to detect incipient myocardial dysfunction in several pathologies, among them, ACR after cardiac Tx.
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