Arterial and left ventricular end-systolic elastance in normal children.

OBJECTIVE Assessing the left ventricular (LV) functions in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, and those pediatric patients with compromised ventricular performance or enhanced systolic or diastolic load e.g. congestive heart failure, hypertension, dilated/hypertrophic cardiomyopathies is a real challenge. Currently used noninvasive methods fail giving quantitative measures to asses cardiac performance and do not allow evaluation of ventriculo-arterial interaction. Non-invasive method of cardiovascular performance determination by measuring left ventricle end-systolic elastance (Ees), arterial elastance (Ea) and the ventriculoarterial coupling (VAC), though interaction between LV and arterial network, is possible. PATIENTS AND METHODS Hundred and forty two otherwise normal children (1 week to 17 years old) were randomly selected. Routine transthoracic echocardiographic and Doppler studies were carried out by an experienced pediatric cardiologist. The results have been evaluated statistically. RESULTS We found that the Ea and Ees(sb) show powerful negative correlation with BSA (r = -0.65, -0.72 respectively) of the children. CONCLUSIONS We suggest that this simple measurement method may be applied at bedside to evaluate ventricular performance of the children.