Comparison between two and three-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography and cardiac T2* magnetic resonance imaging in ß-thalassemia

Objective: We evaluated the accuracy of two-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography (2DSTE) and 3DSTE to identify early cardiac dysfunction in comparison with cardiac T2* magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with blood transfusion-dependent β-Thalassemia. Methods: A total of 48 consecutive patients (36 males) successfully underwent 2DSTE, 3DSTE, and MRI on the same day. We calculated left ventricular segmental global longitudinal strain (GLS) (%) and segmental global circumferential strain (GCS) (%) from strain curves. Cardiovascular MRI was performed with the relevant protocols to measure the T2*. Results: In this study, we found that the GLS and GCS derived from 3DSTE correlated with cardiac T2* (r = −0.50, r = −0.49, respectively), whereas no correlation was detected between 2DSTE parameters and cardiac T2*. We calculated the area under the receiver operating characteristic area under the curve to determine the capability of 3DSTE parameters including GLS (<−23.5%) and GCS (<−33.4%) to discriminate between patients with (cardiac magnetic resonance T2* <20 ms) and those without myocardial iron overload. Conclusion: The study will clarify GLS and GCS's superiority derived from 3DSTE over the 2DSTE parameters in the detection of myocardial iron overload in patients with blood transfusion-dependent β-Thalassemia.