A 19-year-old girl was diagnosed as having primary pulmonary hypertension that was confirmed by right heart catheterization. Acute right heart failure was associated with syncope. Stabilization, while not achieved with intravenous epoprostenol (Prostacyclin) alone, was achieved with intravenous prostacyclin and nitroprusside.

Interpretation of the meaning of a mean diastolic atrioventricular gradient or a mean systolic ventricular-great vessel gradient requires simultaneous determination of the level of the gradient, the heart rate, and the cardiac output. The feasibility of steady-state Fick principle cardiac output determination during combined right and left heart catheterization is investigated. LEFT heart cathe...

0NE of the difficult problems in cardiac catheterization is the identification and localization of small left-to-right shunts. This is particularly trying with small residual shunts following intracardiac surgery. It is recognized that standard oximetry, indicator-dilution curves with injection into the right heart, and right-sided angiocardiography are not sensitive enough to identify small le...

conclusions full echocardiographic examination of the right ventricle, including rvot is essential for the diagnosis of this disease. surgical correction appears to be a successful strategy for management of this rare condition in adults. case presentation we report a 40-year-old man who was referred to cardiology clinic for work-up of dyspnea and a heart murmur found on his physical examinatio...

OBJECTIVE A reliable and easy-to-perform method for measuring right ventricular (RV) afterload is desirable when scheduling patients with systolic heart failure to undergo heart transplantation. The present study aimed to investigate the accuracy of echocardiographically-derived pulmonary arterial elastance as a measurement of pulmonary vascular resistance by comparing it with invasive measures...

0NE of the difficult problems in cardiac catheterization is the identification and localization of small left-to-right shunts. This is particularly trying with small residual shunts following intracardiac surgery. It is recognized that standard oximetry, indicator-dilution curves with injection into the right heart, and right-sided angiocardiography are not sensitive enough to identify small le...

Cardiac ventriculography is used to define the anatomy and function of the ventricles and related structures in patients with congenital, valvular, coronary, and myopathic heart disease (1–5). Specifically, left ventriculography may provide valuable information about global and segmental left ventricular function, mitral valvular incompetence, and the presence, location, and severity of a numbe...

Serial assessment of the status of the pulmonary vascular bed requires bed requires cardiac catheterization. We have demonstrated the right ventricular systolic time intervals (RVSTI) may be measured from the pulmonary valve echo. The right ventricular ejection time (RVET) and right pre-ejection period (RPEP) were measured in 45 normal patients. The RVET and RPEP decreased with increasing heart...

Complete atrioventricular block (CAVB) during cardiac catheterization is a rare complication. We describe a patient with preexisting complete right bundle branch block who developed CAVB during left-sided cardiac catheterization. CAVB was induced when a left-sided catheter was passed through the aortic valve. We speculate that the patient's His bundle was injured by mechanical compression. Phys...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the role of right heart catheterization in the diagnosis of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). METHODS We evaluated clinical, functional, and hemodynamic data from all patients who underwent right heart catheterization because of diagnostic suspicion of PAH--in the absence of severe left ventricular dysfunction (LVD), significant changes in pulmonary function tests, ...