Echocardiographic Evaluation of Patients with Behcet's Disease

Background: Considering the nature of Behcet's disease (BD), which involves multisystem inflammation, we sought to compare the echocardiographic characteristics of BD >5 years' duration with those of healthy subjects. Methods: We compared 73 patients with BD with 74 age-and sex-matched healthy controls. The subjects underwent transthoracic echocardiography and tissue Doppler imaging for the measurement of cardiac function and evaluation of the heart valves. The echocardiographic parameters were then compared between the study groups. Results: Among the echocardiographic parameters, only left ventricular end-diastolic diameter was significantly lower in the patients with BD (47.0 +/- 5.2) than that in the control group (50.8 +/- 4.7; P<0.001). There was also no relationship between the echocardiographic parameters and the active stage of the disease. Conclusions: Diastolic dysfunction was significantly more common in the patients with BD >5 years' duration than in the control group. The other echocardiographic indices were similar in both groups.