In 1936, the Swiss physician Wilhelm Loeffler described a patient with progressive cardiac failure, eosinophilia, and inflammatory endocardial thickening. Subsequently, in 1968, Hardy and Anderson coined the term hypereosinophilic syndromes (HESs) encompassing different entities with marked blood eosinophilia in the…
In the past two decades, two-dimensional speckle-tracking global longitudinal strain (GLS) has become one of the most important new echocardiographic parameters for the assessment of cardiac diseases. Indeed, it has been widely demonstrated that GLS provides reliable and early information…
General Concepts The word “strain,” which in everyday language means “stretching,” in echocardiography indicates a measure of tissue deformation; the “strain rate” is the rate at which the deformation occurs. Considering a given one-dimensional object under either lengthening or shortening…