Wednesday, May 30, 2012

A note on balloon inflation volume of Pulmonary Artery catheter in patients with Pulmonary Hypertension




Pulmonary artery occlusion pressure (PAOP) - commonly know as wedge - is used to differentiate patients having pulmonary hypertension (PH) due to left-sided heart disease from other etiologies. 



One interesting study published in 2010 (see reference), investigated the PAOP measurements obtained from both pulmonary arteries with balloon full (1.5 mL) and half (0.75 mL) inflation in patients with suspected PH.



Study showed that PAOP can be falsely elevated in patients with PH according to the balloon inflation volume. Balloon half inflation was safe and correlated with higher precision and lower bias in the PAOP measurements.






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