Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) survivors from the surfactant era were evaluated by echocardiography in a few studies and no significant differences were found between BPD and non-BPD children. In this study, we evaluated these children with myocardial performance index (MPI), which was obtained by tissue Doppler echocardiography (TDE) in addition to the conventional methods. Fifteen children with BPD who did not have any cardiopulmonary symptoms at the time of the study were examined. All children were studied with M-mode, two-dimensional and DE. Pulmonary artery systolic pressures (PAPs) were estimated from tricuspid regurgitant velocity, and MPI for both ventricles were obtained by TDE. Results were compared with those of term-born, age- and sex-matched control children. While the variables obtained by M-mode and DE did not differ between the groups, the right and left ventricular MPI were found to be significantly higher in the BPD group compared with the control group (mean right ventricular MPI 0.48 +/- 0.04 vs. 0.41 +/- 0.05; mean left ventricular MPI 0.47 +/- 0.05 vs. 0.39 +/- 0.06). In addition, mean PAPs values of the patients were found to be significantly higher than those of the controls (30.4 +/- 6.9 mmHg vs. 23.3 +/- 5.3 mmHg), and there was a positive correlation between PAPs and right ventricular MPI values in the BPD group (r = 0.5). While routine echocardiographic examinations revealed no difference between the groups, MPI measurements by TDE technique yielded significantly higher values in the BPD group. To this extent, our study is the first to show that survivors of BPD may, in fact, have a subclinical ventricular dysfunction.