Statistical Description of the Shape and Deformation of the Left Ventricle During the Cardiac Cycle in Extremely Low and Very Low Birth Weight Premature Infants in the Early Neonatal Period. Pilot Results

The objective of this study is to describe the shape and deformation of the left ventricle (LV) during the cardiac cycle in extremely low and very low birth weight preterm newborns in the early neonatal period. The study included 19 preterm newborns with a weight of up to 1500 g and no clinical signs of hemodynamic disturbances. Echocardiography was performed at one to three days of age. The assessement of LV shape and deformation was conducted using global longitudinal strain, functional geometry, and geometric morphometrics. This is the first report of distributions of characteristics describing LV shape and deformation in very perterm newborns. The methods of geometric morphometrics have been used to obtain characteristics of the shape and deformation of the LV that differ from the rest of the observation group in patients who subsequently experienced an episode of acute heart failure. This allows us to propose a hypothesis about the predictive ability of the parameters of geometric morphometrics of the LV in the early neonatal period in very premature newborns.