Non-invasive monitoring of pulmonary artery pressure at the bedside

Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2016 Aug:2016:4236-4239. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2016.7591662.

Abstract

Current solutions for the monitoring of pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) in patients suffering from pulmonary hypertension are limited to invasive means. Non-invasive alternatives, such as Doppler echocardiography, are incompatible with continuous monitoring due to their dependency on qualified personnel to perform the measurements. In the present study, a novel non-invasive and unsupervised approach based on the use of electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is presented. The approach was evaluated in three healthy subjects undergoing hypoxia-induced variations in PAP. A timing parameter - physiologically linked to the PAP via the so-called pulse wave velocity principle - was automatically extracted from the EIT data. Reference systolic PAP estimates were obtained by echocardiography. Strong correlation scores (r e [0.844, 0.990]) were found between the EIT-derived parameter and the reference PAP, thereby suggesting the validity of the proposed approach. If confirmed in larger datasets, these findings could open the way for a new branch of fully non-invasive hemodynamic monitors for patients with pulmonary hypertension.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Echocardiography, Doppler
  • Electric Impedance
  • Healthy Volunteers
  • Hemodynamics
  • Humans
  • Hypertension, Pulmonary / diagnostic imaging
  • Male
  • Pulmonary Artery / physiology*
  • Pulse Wave Analysis
  • Tomography*