Excerpt

We read with interest the article entitled “Decreased Right Ventricular Function in Healthy Pediatric Cystic Fibrosis Patients Versus Non-Cystic Fibrosis Patients” by Ozcelik et al. [2]. In our opinion, this is a very interesting report describing subclinical right ventricular (RV) dysfunction in patients with mild cystic fibrosis (CF). The authors state that there is a need for detailed evaluation of RV-function parameters, e.g., tricuspid annular peak systolic velocity (S`), in this pediatric population [2]. They found that S′ was significantly lower in the clinically healthy CF patient group than in the control group. For the convenience of the pediatric cardiology audience and especially for centers performing detailed echocardiographic investigations of the right ventricle, we want to add that our group recently reported normal S′ values with z-scores for healthy pediatric patients [1]. In our opinion, the available z-scores will enable physicians to compare every single measured S′ value of pediatric CF patients (in various stages of the disease) with normal z-scores values. It would be of interest to investigate the time point or disease duration at which decreased S′ values in clinically healthy pediatric CF patients [2] decrease below −2 SD and if values below −2 SD correlate well with clinical worsening of these patients. We thank the authors for addressing the need for careful and systematic evaluation of the right ventricle in pediatric patients with mild CF. In our opinion, RV function should be carefully investigated in pediatric as well as adult CF patients in various stages of disease with potentially decreased systolic RV function over time. …