Assessment of left ventricular functions in patients of copd in northern most part of India

Background: COPD is the most frequent pulmonary disease .It is generally known that dyspnoeaand Exercise intolerance occur in the advanced stage of the disease as a result of bronchial patency disturbance progression and development of pulmonary Hypertension.The significance of RV performance is one of the factors determining the clinical course and prognosis in COPD,a potential role of LV is however less studied. Aim: To evaluate the left ventricular Systolic and Diastolic functions in COPD. Material & Methods: A total of 150 patients were studied. All the selected patients were staged according to GOLD criteria.Echocardiographic assessment of Right ventricular and left ventricular functions were done using left and right ventricular chamber size, ejection fraction and diastolic function. Results: On echocardiography left ventricular diastolic was observed in 29 (19.3%) patients, systolic dysfunction was observed in 5 (3.3%) patients.There was good correlation between the frequency of left ventricular function abnormalities and severity of COPD.Pulmonary hypertension was present in 63 patients,out of these 31 patients (49.%) had mild,20 patients (31%) moderate and 12 (19%) had severe pulmonary hypertension. Conclusion: We conclude that LV ventricular functional abnormalities had a good correlation with the severity of COPD and suggest that LV functions should be evaluated in COPD especially in acute exacerbation.