Olsen FJ, Lindberg S, Fritz-Hansen T, et al. - Researchers sought to determine whether early diastolic tissue velocity (e’) by tissue Doppler imaging can aid in predicting mortality in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Six hundred and sixty patients who were treated with CABG were investigated in this study; mean age was 68 years, LVEF 50%, and 84% were men. Prior to surgery, an echocardiogram with tissue Doppler imaging was performed on all patients to measure tissue velocities: systolic (s’), e’, and late diastolic (a’). Of the assessed patients, 72 (11%) died during a median follow-up time of 3.8 years. Observations revealed a significant negative association of all tissue velocities with outcome. After multivariable adjustments, only e’ remained a predictor of all-cause mortality in patients undergoing CABG, especially in patients with LVEF > 40%. Addition of global e’ to the EuroSCORE-II led to a net reclassification index improvement of 0.14.