Statistical Analysis of M-Mode Echocardiographic Normal Reference Values in South Indian Adults

Background: Normal values for echocardiographic measurements are derived from American Society of echocardiography and European Society of Cardiology/European Association of Cardio-Vascular Imaging and their publications. Indians have smaller cardiac chamber dimensions than the Europeans. However, it has been long felt that reference range from western data cannot be fully applied in our scenario.

Aim: The objective of this study was to develop age and gender-specific normative reference range values for echocardiography measurements.

Methodology: This was a retrospective cross-sectional single-center study conduct on 111 healthy Indian adults who were selected out of the 336 patients aged from 18– 76 years, who visited the cardiac medical check-up unit in a tertiary hospital. Echocardiograms were done in participants free of cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, diabetes, high blood pressure or other clinical evident disorders. M-mode Echocardiography in the left parasternal long-axis view was used to measure aorta, left atrium, left ventricle in systole and diastole,right ventricle, interventricular septum, and posterior wall thickness. The 95% reference range of the echocardiographic parameters calculated as a mean±2 “standard deviation for overall and genders specific”.

Results: This study provides a set of data with reference ranges for normal M-mode parameters according to age and gender. Around 58 males and 53 females were classified into the age group from 18-76 years as exclusive class intervals. Age group above of 38 years Indians had higher volume in all the echocardiographic measurements are observed in this study. On examining all our healthy participants, we found that the reference range of most echocardiographic parameters is a highly statistically significant difference as compared with those used in western studies.

Conclusion: The normal reference values for echocardiographic measurements derived from this study could be used for future reference in our local population.