Is Doppler Echocardiography Adequate for Surgical Planning of Single Ventricle Patients?

Purpose: Surgical planning has shown great potential for optimizing outcomes for patients affected by single ventricle (SV) malformations. Phase-contrast magnetic resonance imaging (PC-MRI) is the routine technique used for flow acquisition in the surgical planning paradigm. However, PC-MRI may suffer from possible artifacts in certain cases; furthermore, this technology may not be readily available for patients in low and lower-middle-income countries. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of using Doppler echocardiography (echo-Doppler) for flow acquisitions of SV surgical planning.

Methods: This study included eight patients whose blood flow data was acquired by both PC-MRI and echo-Doppler. A virtual surgery platform was used to generate two surgical options for each patient: (1) a traditional Fontan conduit and (2) a Y-graft. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were conducted using the two flow acquisitions to assess clinically relevant hemodynamic metrics: indexed power loss (iPL) and hepatic flow distribution (HFD).

Results: Differences exist in flow data acquired by PC-MRI and echo-Doppler, but no statistical significance was obtained. Flow fields, therefore, exhibit discrepancies between simulations using flow acquisitions by PC-MRI and echo-Doppler. In virtual surgery, the two surgical options were ranked based on these metrics. No difference was observed in the ranking of surgical options between using different flow acquisitions.

Conclusion: Doppler echocardiography is an adequate alternative approach to acquire flow data for SV surgical planning. This finding encourages broader usage of SV surgical planning with echo-Doppler when MRI may present artifacts or is not available, especially in low and lower-middle-income countries.