Why the study?
Assessing RV contractility-afterload coupling using single-beat methods is valuable, as critical Ees/Ea thresholds indicate rising risk of cardiovascular decompensation.
A novel pressure-based single beat method may allow for the estimation of right ventricular ejection fraction solely from the RV pressure waveform.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Not ready for clinical use; leaves open prospective validation of pressure-only RV EF estimation.
The utility of considering right ventricular (RV) contractility and afterload as independent entities and summarising their balance or “coupling” using single beat methods has become widely appreciated [1–3]. Typically expressed as the ratio of end-systolic ventricular elastance (Ees, a load-independent measure of contractility), to arterial elastance (Ea, a lumped parameter measure of afterload) data suggest that when Ees/Ea reaches a critical threshold, the risk of cardiovascular decompensation begins to rise [4]. This proof of concept study suggests that estimation of RV ejection fraction based solely on analysis of the RV pressure waveform may be feasible The authors would like to thank Daniel Burkhoff for his insightful comments on fundamental principles of cardiac pressure–volume analysis.
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Heerdt et al. (2019) studied this question.
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