[Pulmonary hypertension, involvement of the right and left cardiac parts in patients with ankylosing spondylarthritis].

The literature states that pulmonary hypertension (PH) may develop in ankylosing spondylarthritis (AS); however, there are virtually no evidence for its incidence and the specific features of lesions of the right and left cardiac portions. This study was undertaken to determine the incidence of PH and its specific features in patients with AS. Fifty-five patients with AS were examined. There were prevalent patients with predominantly spinal lesions (50.9%), moderate progression of the disease (61.8%), and Grade III sacroileitis (49.1%). PH was detected in 70.96% of the patients, hypertrophy of the right ventricle (RV) was observed in 47.3%, RV dilation was in 34.5%. There were increases in the end systolic size and volume of the left ventricle (LV) in patients with AS (p < 0.05 and p < 0.05, respectively), ventricular septal thickening (p < 0.05), and a tendency for the posterior LV wall to be thickened. LV diastolic dysfunction occurred in 25.9% of the patients with AS. The found changes were interrelated with the duration of disease, the involvement of the vertebral column, the thoracic part in particular. Thus, the high incidence of PH was ascertained in patients with AS. The study confirms that echocardiography is of high informative value in the detection of PH and right cardiac changes in patients with AS, which shows this method to be screening in identifying the above pathology.