Extension of Doppler-derived echocardiographic measures of pulmonary vascular resistance to patients with moderate or severe pulmonary vascular disease JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY Vlahos, A. P., Feinstein, J. A., Schiller, N. B., Silverman, N. H. 2008; 21 (6): 711-714

Abstract

Pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) is a critical parameter in the assessment and treatment of patients with pulmonary hypertension, regardless of origin. Noninvasive estimation of PVR could be helpful.Consecutive patients with known or suggested pulmonary hypertension referred for cardiac catheterization were evaluated prospectively and the PVR was calculated invasively. Subsequently, the tricuspid regurgitation velocity (TRV), the velocity-time integral (mean of 3 measurements) of the right ventricular outflow tract (VTIm), and the right ventricular outflow tract diameter were recorded noninvasively.The TRV/VTIm ratio and the TRV/VTIm corrected for the indexed RVOT diameter correlated well with the PVR at catheterization with R(2) = 0.711 and R(2) = 0.731, respectively, including patients with very high values of PVR. A TRV/VTI(RVOT) value of 38 provided a specificity of 100% for a PVR of 8 Woods units.Noninvasive estimation is feasible over a broad range of PVR values and could be a useful tool to estimate and longitudinally tracked changes in PVR.

View details for DOI 10.1016/j.echo.2007.10.004

View details for Web of Science ID 000256283900008

View details for PubMedID 18187297