Usefulness of the pulmonary venous flow waveform for assessing left atrial stiffness

This study investigated the novel non-invasive left atrial (LA) stiffness parameter using pulmonary venous (PV) flow measurements and the clinical usefulness of the novel LA stiffness parameter.We retrospectively analyzed 237 patients who underwent right heart catheterization and echocardiography less than one week apart. From the pulmonary artery wedge pressure waveform, the difference between x-descent and v-wave (ΔP) was measured. Using the echocardiographic biplane method of disks, the difference between LA maximum volume and that just before atrial contraction (ΔVAmong the PV flow parameters, D/R was significantly correlated with ΔP (r = 0.62), and the correlation coefficient exceeded that between S/D and ΔP (r = - 0.39) or S/R and ΔP (r = 0.14). The [D/R]/ΔVThe [D/R]/ΔV