Echocardiographic Estimates of Pulmonary Artery Wedge Pressure

IN patients free of pulmonary venous occlusive disease or mitral-valve obstructive disease or both, the pulmonary artery wedge pressure reflects the left atrial pressure and thus the left ventricular filling pressure. Care of a critically ill patient with a cardiac disorder frequently requires measurement of the pulmonary artery wedge pressure by right-heart catheterization with a balloon-tipped flow-directed catheter. Bedside catheterization of the right heart is an expensive procedure with a small but definite risk. 1 An easily obtained and reproducible noninvasive method of assessing left ventricular pressure, using only the electrocardiogram and the echocardiogram, is described below. Phonocardiographic studies in patients . . .