Evaluation of right ventricular performance in patients with acute pulmonary embolism by helical CT.

Purpose: Purpose of this study was to evaluate whether spiral-CT allows judgment of right ventricular failure in patients with acute pulmonary embolism. Materials and Methods: 61 patients underwent spiral-CT due to suspicion of acute pulmonary embolism. Patients with pulmonary embolism were divided into subpopulations according to the severity of pulmonary embolism in the CT scan. Cardiac measurements were performed on axial spiral-CT images and compared to those of patients without suspicion of pulmonary embolism or cardiac diseases. Results: In 30 patients spiral-CT revealed acute pulmonary embolism. Significant differences in cardiac measurements in patients with severe and less severe pulmonary embolism were found on comparing the, following dimensions: left-ventricular width (p=0.0003), left (p=0.008) and right (p=0.009) ventricular cross-sectional area, proportion of right to left ventricular width (p=0.0003) and proportion of right to left ventricular cross-sectional area (p=0.0001). The proportion of the cross-sectional areas (r=0.65) and the proportion of the width (r=0.60) of both ventricles correlated well with the severity of central pulmonary embolism. Conclusion: Besides reliable assessment of pulmonary embolism spiral-CT allows the evaluation of cardiac dimensions for judgment of right ventricular failure.