DOUBLE-LUMEN CATHETER ASSESSMENT OF AORTIC-STENOSIS - COMPARISON WITHSEPARATE CATHETER TECHNIQUE

Hemodynamic assessment of aortic stenosis in the catheterization labor atory requires accurate determination of the transvalvular gradient. A commercially available double-lumen pigtail catheter can be used to o btain this gradient via a single arterial puncture. The catheter has s everal advantages over other methods used to measure the gradient in a ortic stenosis, but it has not been critically evaluated. In order to assess the performance of this catheter compared to the traditional st andard of separate catheters above and across the aortic valve, we stu died 10 patients with aortic stenosis using both catheter systems. Aor tic valve areas ranged from 0.34 cm2 to 1.1 cm2. Linear regression ana lysis confirmed excellent correlation between the two methods in measu rement of the mean transvalvular gradient (r = 0.98) and calculation o f the aortic valve area (r = 0.99) using the Gorlin formula. We conclu de that the double-lumen pigtail catheter provides accurate data in th e hemodynamic evaluation of aortic stenosis.