title: Assessment of the magnitude of aortic regurgitation by dye injection into the descending aorta.
abstract: A technique simpler than the angiographic method for estimating aortic regurgitant volume was tried with 31 patients with aortic insufficiency. During cardiac catheterization, we injected dye into the descending aorta while recording the dye dilution curve in the left ear. The distance between the aortic arch and the tip of the catheter at the lowest point from which the injected dye could be detected in the left ear was rated in terms of the number of corresponding vertebral bodies. This "distance score" closely correlated with the regurgitant stroke volume and with the fraction to total stroke volume, which were measured by angiocardiography (r = 0.927, p less than 0.001; and r = 0.900, p less than 0.001, respectively). The correlation coefficients of the aortographic grade to those parameters were not as high as they were in the relationship of the score to the same parameters. Therefore, these results indicate that the "distance score" is a practical method for assessing the magnitude of aortic regurgitant volume.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000790:Angiocardiography; D001013:Aorta, Thoracic / Q000503:physiopathology; D001022:Aortic Valve Insufficiency / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006328:Cardiac Catheterization / Q000379:methods; D004395:Dye Dilution Technique; D005260:Female; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013318:Stroke Volume