title: Non-invasive monitoring of pulmonary artery pressure at the bedside.
abstract: Current solutions for the monitoring of pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) in patients suffering from pulmonary hypertension are limited to invasive means. Non-invasive alternatives, such as Doppler echocardiography, are incompatible with continuous monitoring due to their dependency on qualified personnel to perform the measurements. In the present study, a novel non-invasive and unsupervised approach based on the use of electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is presented. The approach was evaluated in three healthy subjects undergoing hypoxia-induced variations in PAP. A timing parameter - physiologically linked to the PAP via the so-called pulse wave velocity principle - was automatically extracted from the EIT data. Reference systolic PAP estimates were obtained by echocardiography. Strong correlation scores (r e [0.844, 0.990]) were found between the EIT-derived parameter and the reference PAP, thereby suggesting the validity of the proposed approach. If confirmed in larger datasets, these findings could open the way for a new branch of fully non-invasive hemodynamic monitors for patients with pulmonary hypertension.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Proenca
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Braun
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Muntane
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sola
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Adler
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lemay
authors.forename: J-Ph
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Thiran
authors.forename: S F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Rimoldi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015150:Echocardiography, Doppler; D017097:Electric Impedance; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans; D006976:Hypertension, Pulmonary / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D008297:Male; D011651:Pulmonary Artery / Q000502:physiology*; D063177:Pulse Wave Analysis; D014054:Tomography