Different Doppler echocardiography (DE) models have been proposed for estimation of mean pulmonary arterial pressures (PAMP) from tricuspid regurgitation (TR) jet velocity. We aimed to compare four TR-derived DE models in predicting the PAMP measured by right heart catheterization (RHC) in different groups of precapillary pulmonary hypertension (PH). A total of 287 patients with hemodynamically pre-capillary PH were enrolled (mean age = 51 ± 17.4 years, 59.9% female). All patients underwent DE before RHC (< 3 h) and four formulae (F) were used for TR-derived PAMP estimation (PAMP-DE). These were as follows: F1 = Chemla (0.61 × systolic pulmonary artery pressure [PASP] + 2); F2 = Friedberg (0.69 × PASP - 0.22), F3 = Aduen (0.70 × PASP); and F4 = Bech-Hanssen (0.65 × PASP - 1.2). The PASP and PAMP (mmHg) measured by RHC were 89.1 ± 30.4 and 55.8 ± 20.8, respectively. In the overall PH group, DE estimates for PASP (r = 0.59, P = 0.001) and PAMP (r = 0.56, P = 0.001 for all) showed significant correlations with corresponding RHC measures. Concordance was noted between Chemla and Bech-Hanssen, and Aduen and Bech-Hanssen. The Bland-Altman plot showed that Chemla and Bech-Hanssen overestimated and Friedberg and Aduen underestimated PAMP-RHC measures. Paired-t test showed significant systematic biases for Aduen and Bech-Hanssen while Passing-Bablok non-parametric analysis revealed significant systematic biases all four PAMP-DE estimates. There was poor agreement between PAMP-RHC measures and PAMP-DE deciles (Kappa values were 0.112, 0.097, 0.095, and 0.121, respectively). This study showed a poor agreement between PAMP-DE estimates by four TR-derived formulae and PAMP-RHC in patients with PH, regardless of the etiology. However, these results can not be fully extrapolated to a normal population and did not address the reliability of DE estimates for PH screening procedures.
Keywords: agreement; echocardiography; pulmonary artery pressure; pulmonary hypertension; right heart catheterization.