[Feasibility and accuracy of pulmonary blood flow measurement by Doppler echocardiography. Apropos of 100 consecutive cases].
One of the main advantages of Doppler echocardiography is the possibility of non-invasive measurement of blood flow at each valvular orifice. This method enables quantification of valvular regurgitation, the measurement of Qp/Qs in cardiac disease with atrial or ventricular shunts, and the interpretation of gradients and functional surface areas in valvular stenosis or prosthesis with respect to the underlying haemodynamics. In each of these application, the measurement of pulmonary blood flow is valuable as the reference blood flow, and even indispensible in cases of shunts. The authors' objective was to study the feasibility and accuracy of pulmonary flow measurement in 100 consecutive patients (40 women and 60 men, average age 56.7 +/- 17.5 years) with cardiac disease (82%) or healthy hearts (18%). A grading from A to D was accorded depending on the technical difficulty of the examination, each grade having three degrees: 1) difficulty of recording and poor quality Doppler spectrum, 2) difficulty of measuring orifice diameter by 2D echocardiography, 3) necessity of analysis of color coded anterograde flow to measure the pulmonary valvular orifice. Grade A was distributed to easily recordable measurements with no difficulty; grade B for measurements with one difficulty; grade C for measurements with 2 difficulties and grade D for investigations judged to be impossible or unreliable (3/3 criteria). The feasibility of measurement of the cardiac output at the pulmonary orifice was 88% (A:55%, B:25%, C:8%). The correlation between the pulmonary flow and reference measurements at the aortic and/or mitral valve and/or mitral annulus was 0.96. The average difference between the pulmonary and reference flow was 51 +/- 273 cc/min.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Vanzetto
G
G
Clinique cardiologique et urgences cardiologiques, CHU de Grenoble.
Denis
B
B
Mann
H
H
Defaye
P
P
Mansour
P
P
Bertrand
B
B
Contard
M
M
Machecourt
J
J
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001783:Blood Flow Velocity; D002302:Cardiac Output; D015150:Echocardiography, Doppler; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011651:Pulmonary Artery / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
Faisabilité et précision de la mesure du débit pulmonaire par méthode échocardiographique Doppler. A propos de 100 cas consécutifs.