Abstract
Purpose: This study was conducted to determine whether the curvature of the interventricular septum (IVS) by echocardiography was influenced by severity of chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH).
Materials and Methods: Subjects (n=45,60±11 [mean ± SD] years, 13 male ) with proven CTEPH, which including patients treated with pulmonary endarterectomy or/and pulmonary vasodilators, underwent echocardiography within two days before right heart catheterization (RHC). Using the cross-sectional echocardiography, we put three points on the endocardial surface of the IVS (anterior, inferior and the center of both sides) at the mid-papillary level and calculated the radius of circle throughout three points.
IVS curvature was defined to be the reciprocal of radius at end-systolic phase, which was compared with pulmonary hemodynamics by RHC.
Results: Systolic pulmonary artery pressure (sPAP), mean pulmonary artery pressure (mPAP) and pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) from RHC were 55±25 mmHg, 30±12 mmHg and 5.3±3.3 WU, respectively. The correlation coefficients of IVS curvature with sPAP, mPAP and PVR were -0.67 (P <.001), -0.66 (P <.001) and -0.59 (P <.001), respectively.
Conclusions: IVS curvature based on echocardiography can be used to estimate pulmonary hemodynamics in subjects with CTEPH.
This imaging modality may be helpful to assess hemodynamics in CTEPH, simply and non-invasively.
- © 2014 ERS
