Estimation of pulmonary vascular resistance in patients with ventricular septal defects by echo-Doppler cardiography.
The pulmonary vascular resistance is one of the parameters considered in the evaluation of patients with ventricular septal defects. We describe a new method to estimate resistance. The method estimates the systolic resistance in the pulmonary circulation and we assume that there is a linear relation between this resistance and the traditional resistance in which a continuous flow in systole and diastole is assumed. The systolic resistance was compared to the traditional resistance index in a group of patients whose invasive data were evaluated retrospectively. A close correlation between the two estimates of resistance was found and when the results were applied to another group of patients examined non-invasively and invasively there was no significant difference between the invasive resistance index and the non-invasive estimate arrived at by the new method.
Department of Pediatric Cardiology, IWK Hospital for Children, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.
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D000293:Adolescent; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D015150:Echocardiography, Doppler; D005260:Female; D006345:Heart Septal Defects, Ventricular / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D011652:Pulmonary Circulation / Q000502:physiology*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014655:Vascular Resistance / Q000502:physiology*; D016276:Ventricular Function / Q000502:physiology*