[Quantification of aortic insufficiencies. Comparison between Doppler echocardiography and qualitative angiographic methods: apropos of a series of 60 consecutive patients].

Many doppler echocardiographic indices have been described for quantifying aortic regurgitation, posing the problem of the relative value of each. Therefore, the authors assessed the severity of aortic regurgitation in 60 consecutive patients (16 women and 44 men, mean age 56.7 years, range 7 to 84 years) by the four grades of Seller's classification with selective aortography. These results were compared with Doppler echocardiographic measurement of anterograde cardiac output (Qao), the pressure half time (PHT), diameter of the jet at its origin in M mode colour Doppler (DTM) and calculation of the regurgitant fraction (RF) by comparison of flow at the different cardiac orifices by a method previously described and validated in the author's laboratory with an interorifice correlation of 0.91 to 0.96 and confidence intervals at 95% of the order of 12%. The feasibility of doppler echocardiographic methods was good: 87.8% for PHT (58/66 patients), 90% for DTM (36/40 patients), 90.9% for Qao and RF (60/66 patients). The correlation with aortography was -0.65 (p < 0.01) for PHT; 0.91 (p < 0.01) for DTM, 0.80 (p < 0.01) for Qao and 0.92 (p < 0.005) for RF. However, there was a number of overlaps between Grades I and II and Grades III and IV.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)