STROKE NORMALIZED PRESSURE - A USEFUL PARAMETER FOR THE ANALYSIS OF LEFT-VENTRICULAR OUTFLOW OBSTRUCTION

A new method of presenting the in vivo left ventricular pressure-flow data is developed in the present study. This separates left ventricle ejection into unrestricted progressively restricted and severely restr icted cases. This method uses ejection volume and time to define a nor malizing 'stroke' pressure, which is successful in collapsing the larg e variability of in vivo data to a few curves with characteristic shap es, depending on the degree of obstruction. Hypertrophic cardiomyopath y is shown to fall into both unrestricted and progressively restricted categories. Normal hearts form the unrestricted case, while a severe aortic valvular stenosis is characteristic of the severely restricted case. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science for IPEMB.