Inconsistency in aortic stenosis severity between CT and echocardiography: prevalence and insights into mechanistic differences using computational fluid dynamics

What is it about?

Inconsistencies between the different echocardiographic parameters for grading aortic stenosis severity are well known. We studied the discrepancy between CT aortic valve area and echocardiographic Doppler parameters in 450 patients and found that a CT valve area >1cm2 is present in up to a quarter of patients with severe haemodynamic AS. Using computational fluid dynamics we demonstrated that this is due to high flow rates or in association with skewed velocity profile across the valve orifice.

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