Prevalence of diastolic dysfunction in patients with ankylosing spondylitis: a cross-sectional study

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of diastolic dysfunction (DD) in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) by following recommended criteria from the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) and using single variables reflecting DD. Method: A total of 187 patients with AS (105 men; mean age 51 +/- 13 years; mean duration of disease 15 +/- 11 years) fulfilled the inclusion criteria and underwent pulsed-wave and tissue Doppler imaging. Results: By following ASE recommended criteria, we observed that 12% of patients with AS had mild DD. We also compared single standard Doppler values with normal age-stratified reference values and showed a wide variation in the number of patients with AS outside the 95% confidence interval (CI) of normal values depending on the variable chosen (ranging from 1.1% to 30.5%). Conclusions: By following recommended criteria, our cross-sectional study shows that DD was infrequent and mild in patients with AS.