Geert Kleinnibbelink

Chapter 6 142 Thepurposeof this systematic reviewandmeta-analysiswas todetermine the independent prognostic value of RVLS in patients with PH on PH-related events and all-cause mortality. We hypothesize that RVLS will have independent prognostic value in PH patients for PH- related events and all-cause mortality. METHODS Search strategy A systematic search was performed with the use of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis statement 2015 (PRISMA). 31 Pubmed (MEDLINE), Embase, the Cochrane Library and Web of Science were systematically searched for articles published before February 1 th , 2018. The following search strategy was used, with adaptation for each database: ((((“Hypertension, Pulmonary”[Mesh]) OR ((Pulmonary hypertension[tiab] OR Pulmonary artery hypertension[tiab] OR Pulmonary arterial hypertension[tiab] OR PAH[tiab] OR lung arterial hypertension[tiab] OR lung artery hypertension[tiab]ORlunghypertension[tiab]))))AND((strain[tiab]ORdeformation[tiab]))) AND (((“Prognosis”[Mesh] OR “Survival Analysis”[Mesh] OR “Mortality”[Mesh] OR “mortality”[Subheading] OR“Hospitalization”[Mesh])) OR (Prognos*[tiab] OR Predict*[tiab] OR Surviv*[tiab] OR Mortalit*[tiab] OR Hazard ratio*[tiab] OR Hospitalization[tiab] OR Hospitalisation[tiab])). References of included articles were manually checked for possible eligible studies that were missed during the literature search. Study selection After the initial search, duplicates were eliminated from the database. Two authors (H.H., G.K.) independently screened the remaining study titles and abstracts for eligibility using the predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria ( Table 1 ), resulting in 42 articles from which full text was assessed ( Figure 1 ).