title: Can we assess the changes of ventricular filling resulting from acute allograft rejection with Doppler echocardiography?
abstract: We investigated the value of several Doppler echocardiographic measurements for the diagnosis of acute allograft rejection after orthotopic heart transplantation. In all, 144 transmitral flow velocity curves and 159 internal jugular venous flow velocity curves were recorded by continuous wave Doppler echocardiography, and the results were compared with the histologic findings. The recordings were evaluated with a computer-aided analysis system. The Doppler measurements did not show any significant correlation with the biopsy results. Only one recording obtained during a moderate acute rejection episode supported the hypothesis about the relation between jugular venous flow and cardiac rejection. We conclude that these Doppler echocardiographic measurements are not suitable to detect acute allograft rejection noninvasively.
authors.affiliation: Department of Echocardiography, Academic Hospital Dijkzigt, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Forster
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: McGhie
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Rijsterborgh
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: van de Borden
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Laird-Meeter
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Balk
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Essed
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Roelandt
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001706:Biopsy; D001783:Blood Flow Velocity; D003326:Coronary Circulation; D015150:Echocardiography, Doppler; D006084:Graft Rejection; D016027:Heart Transplantation; D006801:Humans; D009206:Myocardium / Q000473:pathology