Diagnosis of mitral insufficiency using impedance cardiography technique ICG

Abstract

Impedance cardiography (ICG) is a non-invasive tool for assessing the hemodynamic parameters. It has been used for diagnosing several cardiovascular diseases, such as heart failure, cardiomyopathy, and valvular diseases. Particularly, the valvular heart disease is characterized by the damage in one of the four heart valves: the mitral, aortic, tricuspid or pulmonary valves. The mitral valve insufficiency and the aortic valve stenos are the most frequent valve diseases in the world. In this paper, we propose to diagnosis the mitral valve insufficiency using the impedance cardiography technique. The study group consisted of 40 subjects (20 control subjects and 20 patients with mitral insufficiency). A parameter "I" is calculated from the impedance cardiogram waveform and it is used to differentiate control subjects from patients with mitral insufficiency. The parameter "I" was related significantly to the abnormalities of the impedance cardiogram waveform. For patients with mitral insufficiency, "I" was higher than for the healthy subjects with a difference ratio of 89% (p<0.001). To improve the diagnosis, we determined the stroke volume, cardiac output, and other hemodynamic parameters for the two groups of subjects. Finally, we concluded that we could identify, easily, patients with mitral insufficiency based on the abnormalities of the impedance cardiogram tracings and a characteristic parameter "I".