• Henning Gall, Athiththan Yogeswaran, Jan Fuge, Natascha Sommer, Friedrich Grimminger, Werner Seeger, Karen M Olsson, Marius M Hoeper, Manuel J Richter, Khodr Tello, and Hossein Ardeschir Ghofrani.
• Department of Internal Medicine, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Universities of Giessen and Marburg Lung Centre (UGMLC, Member of the German Centre for Lung Research (DZL), Klinikstrasse 32, 35392, Germany.
• EClinicalMedicine. 2021 Apr 1; 34: 100822.

BackgroundCurrently an echocardiographic threshold for the tricuspid regurgitation gradient (TRG) of > 31 mmHg is recommended for screening for pulmonary hypertension (PH). Invasively diagnosed PH was recently redefined as mean pulmonary arterial pressure (mPAP) > 20 mmHg instead of ≥ 25 mmHg. We investigated the ability of TRG to screen for the new PH-definition.MethodsRetrospective assessment of echocardiography and right heart catheterisation data from 1572 patients entering the Giessen PH-Registry during 2008-2018. Accuracy of different TRG thresholds and other echocardiographic parameters was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic curves.Findings1264 patients fulfilled the new PH-definition. Positive (PPV) and negative predictive values and accuracy of TRG > 46 mmHg were 95%, 39%, and 73%, respectively, for the new PH-definition. Lowering the TRG cut-off to 31 mmHg and below worsened PPV to ≤ 89%. The PPV of TRG for pre-capillary PH (mPAP > 20 mmHg and pulmonary vascular resistance ≥ 3 Wood Units) was ≤ 85%. In patients with TRG ≤ 46 mmHg, tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion/TRG and TRG/right ventricular outflow tract acceleration time were superior to TRG in screening for newly defined pre-capillary PH.InterpretationIn patients with suspected PH referred to a tertiary care centre, the PPV of TRG to meet the new PH-definition depended strongly on the TRG cut-off used. Our data do not support lowering the TRG cut-off. Combining TRG with other echocardiographic parameters might improve the validity of echocardiographic screening for PH.© 2021 The Authors.

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