Impact of Autonomic Neuropathy on Left Ventricular Function in Normotensive Type 1 Diabetic Patients: a Tissue Doppler Echocardiographic Study
Response to Humpert et al.
- Theodoros D. Karamitsos, PHD1,
- Haralambos I. Karvounis, MD2,
- Triantafyllos Didangelos, MD3,
- Georgios E. Parcharidis, MD2 and
- Dimitrios T. Karamitsos, MD3
- 1Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, U.K.
- 2First Cardiology Department, AHEPA University Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece
- 3First Propedeutic Department of Internal Medicine, AHEPA University Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece
- Corresponding author: Dr. Theodoros D. Karamitsos, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9DU, U.K. E-mail: theo.karamitsos{at}cardiov.ox.ac.uk
We thank Dr. Humpert et al. (1) for their interest in our study (2). The authors present data that support the presence of left ventricular (LV) asynchrony in patients with type 2 diabetes in association with cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction (CAN) and LV function.
The authors divided their type 2 diabetic cohort into three groups based on tertiles of expiration-to-inspiration ratio of heart rate variability. Interestingly, although they found a decrease in LV ejection fraction with decreasing autonomic function, there …
