Abstract
Previous studies have shown that Doppler echographic methods based on the continuity equation can accurately determine aortic valve area in patients with clinically significant aortic stenosis; nonetheless, methods based on the continuity equation are time-consuming and may not be technically possible in all subsets of patients. Thee purpose of this study was to develop and prospectively evaluate a simpler new noninvasive method for determining aortic valve area. With this new method, aortic valve area is obtained by dividing the percent fractional anteroposterior shortening at the midventriclevel by 4V2, where V is the peak instantaneous Doppler-derived How velocity across the aortic valve. In the fast part of the study, the fractional shortening-velocity ratio was used to examine a group of 25 patients evaluated retrospectively. There was a highly significant linear relation between the fractional shortening-velocity ratio (FSVR) and the aortic valve area (AVA) determined by the Gorlin formula at cardiac catheterization: FSVR = 1.1(AVA) - 0.1 (r = 0.88; significance of slope p < 0.001). Furthermore, a fractional shortening-velocity ratio <1.1 reliably identified all patients with clinically significant aortic stenosis (aortic valve area <1 cm2), whereas a fractional shortening-velocity ratio <0.8 reliably identified all patients with critical aortic stenosis (aortic valve area <0.7 cm2). This new method was then validated by prospectively applying the fractignal shortening-velocity ratio to a group of 44 patients from two separate institutions. This prospective study showed that a fractional shortening-velocity ratio <l.l had a seRR-Jitivity of 90% to 96% and a positive predictive accuracy of 90% to 92% for identifying patients with significant aortic stenosis, whereas a fractional shortening-velocity ratio <0.8 had a sensitivity of 100% and a predictive accuracy of 74% to % for identifying patients with critical aortic stenosis. In summary, the fractional shortening-velocity ratio is a new Doppler echocardiographic method that reliably identifies patients with clinically significant aortic stenosis. The simplicity of this new noninvasive method readily lends itself to routine clinical use.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1578-1584 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Journal of the American College of Cardiology |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 1990 |