Vortex formation time: an emerging echocardiographic index of left ventricular filling efficiency?

Vortex formation time: an emerging echocardiographic index of left ventricular filling efficiency?

About 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci conducted a haemodynamic study of the sinus of Valsalva in which he deduced and explained formation of a blood flow vortex. Fast forwarding to the present, Gharib et al. used an experimental arrangement of a piston producing a wide range of jets and vortex rings alongside those jets by pushing columns of fluid of length L through an orifice with diameter D...

Left ventricular fluid dynamics in heart failure: echocardiographic measurement and utilities of vortex formation time.

BACKGROUND In clinical heart failure (HF), inefficient propagation of blood through the left ventricle (LV) may result from suboptimal vortex formation (VF) ability of the LV during early diastole. We aim to (i) validate echocardiographic-derived vortex formation time (adapted) (VFTa) in control subjects and (ii) examine its utility in both systolic and diastolic HF. METHODS Transthoracic ech...

Echocardiographic assessment of left ventricular filling after mitral valve surgery.

In order to investigate the functional effects of mitral valve surgery, echocardiograms showing left ventricular dimension were recorded and digitised in 14 normal subjects and 129 patients after mitral valve surgery. Measurements were made of peak rate of increase of dimension (dD/dt) and duration of rapid filling, studies on left ventriculograms in 36 patients having shown close correlation b...

Echocardiographic Estimation of Left Ventricular Filling Pressure: Fact or Fiction?*

Vortex Ring Formation in Diastolic Dysfunction: Phase Contrast MRI of Left Ventricular Filling

Introduction The formation of vortices during left ventricular (LV) filling (Fig. 1) has been noted in several investigations using phase contrast (PC) MRI [1,2], but the effect of diastolic dysfunction (DD) on vortex formation has not been investigated. We hypothesize that impaired relaxation (IR) and increased stiffness of the LV wall in DD, will substantially alter the kinetics of the vortic...