Detection of aortic insufficiency by pulse doppler echocardiography

Abstract

Sixty-five patients were studied for the presence of aortic insufficiency by auscultation, conventional M mode echocardiography (echo), range-gated pulse Doppler flowmeter (Doppler), and supravalvular aortic angiography. Aortic insufficiency was demonstrated angiographically in 49 patients, of which eight (16%) were missed by auscultation. Echo missed 20 (41%), and Doppler missed seven (14%). Only two (4%) were missed by auscultation and Doppler combined. All methods were highly specific, but the combination of auscultation and Doppler was the most sensitive noninvasive method for detecting aortic insufficiency.

Range-gated pulsed Doppler echocardiographic diagnosis of supracardiac total anomalous pulmonary venous drainage.

“…Details concerning the method can be found elsewhere. [4][5][6][7][8][9] The patients were examined in the supine position, with the transducer located in the third or fourth intercostal space at the left sternal margin, as in conventional echocardiography.11 Suprasternal notch echocardiograms were obtained according to the Goldberg method.1" The beam was directed inferiorly and slightly leftward to vizualize the transverse aortic arch and right pulmonary artery. An example of normal flow in these structures is presented in figure 3.…”

Does This Patient Have Aortic Regurgitation?

“…33 The best-studied physical finding is the typical early diastolic murmur of AR. [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] If an examiner does not hear a typical AR murmur then the likelihood that the patient has moderate or greater AR is significantly reduced (negative LR, 0.1 for grade A studies); the likelihood of mild or greater AR is also significantly reduced (negative LR, 0.2-0.3 for grade A studies). 34,35 If an examiner hears the typical AR murmur, the likelihood that the patient has moderate or greater AR is increased (positive LR, 4.0-8.3 for grade A studies); the likelihood of mild or greater AR is also significantly increased (positive LR, 8.8-32.0 for grade A studies).…”

Clinical investigation of aortic insufficiency by means of pulsed doppler echocardiography.

“…Since its advent, pulsed Doppler echocardiography has enabled us to non-invasively evaluate the blood flow pattern in a specific area of the great vessels and the heart chambers.20) Many authors have reported that this method is very useful for diagnosis of cardiac shunt and valvular regurgitation and for evaluating the cardiac function in the normal and the diseased hearts.21)- 30) In this study, we used an ATL 500A pulsed Doppler system which displayed the flow pattern as a series of points of the time interval histogram. When the blood flow within the sample volume is laminar, a narrowly dispersed dot pattern is printed on the strip chart recorder.…”