Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Pediatrics

Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of death in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), especially during the late phase of the disease. Ventricular dysfunction is considered one of its common findings with overt morbidity and mortality. There is also some evidence about the association of antiphospholipid (aPL) antibodies with ventricular dysfunction in children with SLE and also there is a correlation between the activity of the disease and right ventricular dysfunction. This study aimed at evaluating the prevalence of echocardiographically documented systolic and diastolic right ventricular dysfunction in patients with SLE with or without anti-phospholipid antibodies, and to examine whether these antibodies are associated with right ventriclar dysfunction independently of valvular abnormalities and to evaluate the association of the disease activity with right ventricular function. Tissue Doppler echocardiography was performed on 30 patients with SLE whether they had antiphospholipid syndrome or not ,anticardiolipin antibodies was done to all patients and repeated after 6 weeks in positive cases and The disease activity using SLEDAI-2K score was done for all patients at the time of the study .Another 30 normal volunteer patients were taken as matched controls. 16 patients (53.3 %) had positive antiphospholipid antibodies, of whom 9 (30%) had positive aCL IgM, 7 (23.3%) had positive aCL IgG. 8 patients of those with positive APL antibodies had clinical evidence suggestive of antiphospholipid syndrome.The mean of the disease activity of all patients measured at the time of the study was 22 patients with venous manifestations of APS have higher SLEDAI score than patients with absent manifestations. No significant increase of pulmonary artery pressure in secondary antiphospholipid syndrome patients

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