Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography
Clinical Investigations in ChildrenNormalizing Echocardiographic Measurements in Children and NeonatesEchocardiographic Nomograms for Chamber Diameters and Areas in Caucasian Children
Section snippets
Inclusion Criteria
Healthy Caucasian children evaluated in the outpatient department of the Pediatric Cardiology Department for the screening of congenital heart disease at Fondazione G. Monasterio CNR–Regione Toscana of Massa eligible for inclusion into the study were prospectively enrolled.
The presence of innocent defects such as a patent ductus arteriosus with small or less left-to-right shunting seen in the first 3 days of life or a patent foramen ovale was considered to be normal.7, 9 Premature neonates were
Subjects
A total of 1,091 children (age range, 0 days to 17 years) were enrolled. The mean age of the study population was 53.3 months (median, 34.9 months; interquartile range, 2.2–95.1 months; range, 0–17 years). Body weight ranged from 1.3 to 88.0 kg (median, 13.7 kg; interquartile range, 4.9–28.0 kg) (Table 3). Height ranged from 41 to 181 cm (median, 93 cm; interquartile range, 57–127 cm). BSA calculated with the Haycock formula22 ranged from 0.12 to 1.8 m2 (median, 0.6 m2; interquartile range,
Discussion
The importance of accurate pediatric nomograms has recently been addressed by various authors,1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 with recommendations to use Z scores for quantification during the performance of pediatric echocardiography. Various numeric and methodologic limitations of actual pediatric nomograms have been underscored by multiple authors.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
The nomograms we present offer the advantage of a rigorous statistical approach6 whose importance has been widely explained1, 2, 3, 4
Conclusions
The nomograms provided in the present report may be considered helpful tools for clinicians to perform quantitative measurements of cardiac chamber areas and diameters in children with various acquired and congenital heart defects.
In particular, this work substantially covers the gap of knowledge on chamber dimensions in children with the advantage of a rigorous statistical design.
Further studies, however, are required to reinforce these data, as well as to evaluate other parameters of clinical
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