Study limitations:
Our study relied on echocardiographic image quality for assessment of RV
systolic function. Sub-optimal image quality or tracking of the
endocardial border occurred most commonly pre-discharge, due to the
difficulty in obtaining an adequate dedicated RV apical four-chamber
view in the presence of a recent left lateral thoracotomy scar and
surgical dressings. A cutoff value of -20% for abnormal RVFWLS was used
for this study (derived from vendor specific data). We acknowledge that
one of the most important and widely discussed limitations of 2D-STE
remains inter-vendor variability [28, 29]. Nevertheless, our inter-
and intra-observer intra-class coefficients were comparable to 2D-STE
data from other high-volume centers.