*2.3. Follow-Up of Clinical Outcomes*

The clinical follow-up was obtained by completing a questionnaire either on hospital visits, telephone house-calls, or both, aiming at delineating the occurrence of the clinical outcomes, which corresponded to the first event occurring in each patient among the following MACEs: death or aborted death from cardiac cause, sustained ventricular tachyarrhythmia (beats with ventricular origin that lasts >30 s and has a rate greater than >100 beats/min), and HF requiring hospitalization defined accordingly to current international guidelines [4,5]. Hospitalisation due to non-cardiac causes was not counted as event. Survival analysis was performed for the clinical outcomes. The median follow-up was 17 months and maximum follow-up reached 29 months.

**Figure 2.** Representative image illustrating the technique for assessment of LAS (**A**,**B**) and LVSI (**C**,**D**) in a patient with severe NIDCM in end-diastole and end-systole, respectively. Abbreviations: LAS, left ventricular long axis strain; LVSI, left ventricular sphericity index; NIDCM, non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy.
