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.