RESEARCH ARTICLE
Quantitative Doppler-Echocardiographic Determination of Regurgitant Volume in Patients with Aortic Insufficiency
Paul Schoenhagen*, a, Ludwig Drudeb, Hermann H Kleinc, Mario J Garciaa
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 12
Last Page: 19
Publisher ID: TOCMJ-2-12
DOI: 10.2174/1874192400802010012
Article History:
Received Date: 29/1/2008Revision Received Date: 17/2/2008
Acceptance Date: 19/2/2008
Electronic publication date: 4/3/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background:
The severity of aortic regurgitation (AR) can be determined by invasive or echocardiographic methods. We systematically compared quantitative invasive and echocardiographic data with semiquantitative invasive grades in a prospective series of patients.
Methods:
Using Doppler-echocardiography we determined the cardiac output over the aortic, pulmonary and mitral valve in 27 patients (20 with, 7 without AR). Aortic regurgitant volume was calculated as the difference between the cardiac output over aortic and pulmonary valve/ mitral valve. During angiography the severity of AR was assessed semiquantitatively by aortography and the regurgitant volume was calculated invasively as the difference between the left- and right ventricular cardiac output.
Results:
The echocardiographically and invasively determined regurgitant blood volume correlated closely (R≈0.8). The regurgitant volume increased with higher angiographic grade but there was significant overlap between adjoining qualitative grades.
Conclusion:
In patients with AR, quantitative echocardiographic and angiographic measurements of the regurgitant volume correlate closely.
