Cardiac dysfunction due to cardiotoxicity from anthracycline chemotherapy is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in childhood cancer survivors. They have performed a prospective echocardiographic study on 40 survivors of childhood cancer who received anthracycline therapy and 53 similar-age normal controls and assessed intraventricular pressure gradient "IVPG" as a suction force of blood from the left atrium LV apex during early diastole. The results showed that apical IVPG significantly decreased in survivors of childhood cancer than in normal controls. Basal IVPG, E-wave, and E / e' as indicators of classical diastolic function were not significantly different between patients & normal controls. While anthracycline chemotherapy shows strong antitumor effects, they cause myocardial necrosis & irreversible myocardial damage remains even after drug discontinuation. IVPG might be used to diagnose myocardial damage in pediatric cancer survivors after anthracycline therapy earlier. Our company sells software which can measure such IVPG, named iTEcho, which is a software package, including Echo VFM & IVPG.

Sachie Shigemitsu, Ken Takahashi, Kana Yazaki, Maki Kobayashi, Mariko Yamada, Katsumi Akimoto, Hiroyuki Tamaichi, Junya Fujimura, Masahiro Saito, Masaki Nii, Keiichi Itatani, Toshiaki Shimizu, "New insight into the intraventricular pressure gradient as a sensitive indicator of diastolic cardiac dysfunction in patients with childhood cancer after anthracycline therapy", Heart and Vessels, 34 (2019) 992-1001.