Utility and Validation of Corrected Left Ventricular Filling Time for Determining the Optimal AV Delay in Patients Receiving Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy

Background: Optimizing the atrio-ventricular delay (AVD) is important for increasing the left ventricular (LV) preload in patients receiving cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). The optimal AVD may be considered an AVD in which the maximum LV filling time (LVFT) is obtained. However, it is unclear whether or not the optimal AVD determined by Ritter's method (AVD-Ritter) is identical to the AVD in which the maximum LVFT is obtained. The aim of this study was to clarify this point.