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A research team from the Department of Cardiology at Samsung Medical Center has developed a novel diagnostic model that more accurately predicts right atrial pressure and pulmonary artery pressure using echocardiography in patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation. 

This study, conducted by Professors Sungji Park, Jeonghoon Yang, Jihoon Kim, and clinical instructor Onyu Kim, was recently published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JAHA, Impact Factor 6.1). Previously, invasive cardiac catheterization was essential for diagnosis, but it posed a high burden on patients, and the diagnostic accuracy of echocardiography was limited. The research team prospectively validated the accuracy by performing simultaneous cardiac catheterization and echocardiography on 48 critically ill patients between 2021 and 2024.  In particular, for patients with a right atrial pressure of 15 mmHg, where the accuracy of existing guidelines was limited, the team analyzed three additional indicators: changes in inferior vena cava diameter, hepatic venous reflux wave, and the tricuspid regurgitation wave (V-wave cutoff sign) to establish new diagnostic criteria. By applying this approach, the prediction error was reduced, and the correlation with the actual measured values significantly improved to 0.84. 

Professor Sungji Park said, “Samsung Medical Center is a specialized center performing the highest number of cardiac catheterizations in Korea, and this valuable result was achieved through efforts to minimize the burden on patients.” She added, “We will continue to build a cardiac catheterization–echocardiography cohort for tricuspid regurgitation to better select appropriate surgical and interventional candidates and advance related research with the goal of establishing optimal treatment timing.”