Utility of Pulmonary Valve Acceleration Time in Estimating Systolic Pulmonary Artery Pressure: A Comparative Analysis with Established Noninvasive Approaches

A BSTRACT Background: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) diagnosis often relies on invasive right heart catheterization. This study aimed to evaluate the utility of pulmonary valve acceleration time (PVAT) as a noninvasive echocardiographic method for assessing pulmonary artery pressure compared to other techniques. (PVAT) is a valuable tool in screening, diagnosing, and monitoring PH, especially when used alongside tricuspid regurgitation (TR) velocity and RV function. Methodology: This prospective descriptive study included 45 patients with suspected pulmonary artery hypertension. Comprehensive transthoracic echocardiography was performed to measure PVAT, TR jet velocity, and pulmonary regurgitation (PR) jet velocity. Correlations between these parameters were analyzed. Results: PVAT showed a strong negative correlation with TR jet velocity ( r = −0.925, P < 0.001). Pulmonary artery diastolic pressure correlated positively with peak PR velocity ( r = 0.898, P < 0.001) and negatively with PVAT ( r = −0.453, P = 0.002). Peak PR velocity and PVAT demonstrated a moderate negative correlation ( r = −0.389, P = 0.008). Conclusion: PVAT demonstrated strong correlations with established echocardiographic parameters for assessing pulmonary artery pressure. This suggests PVAT is a reliable noninvasive method for estimating systolic and mean pulmonary artery pressures, particularly valuable when TR or PR jet velocities are difficult to obtain or interpret accurately.