How useful are acceleration- and deceleration-based Doppler indices? A trial on patients with percutaneous transluminal angioplasty.

The usefulness of indices commonly used in Doppler sonography is limited; the aim of this study was to investigate if inclusion of systolic acceleration and deceleration patterns in Doppler indices will result in practical diagnostic advantages. Systolic delay time index (SDTI) and height-width index (HWI) are compared to Gosling's pulsatility index (PI) and to PI-based damping factors (DF) in patients with isolated lesions in the distal superficial femoral artery before and after percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA). Before PTA, all indices distal to the lesion differ significantly from proximal indices. After successful PTA, none of the indices is able to detect the PTA outcome with sufficient sensitivity. The additionally defined curve broadening index (CBI) shows a 100% sensitivity for detecting PTA success in the examined patient population.