A new noninvasive evaluation method of pulmonary thromboembolism in rabbits—pulmonary transit time

作者：He Zhang, Jianfeng Chen, Jiayu Wang, Song Kang, Yingying Liu, Binyang Zhu, Mei Xue, Xin Ai, Guangyin Li, Shuangquan Jiang · 发表于：Cardiovascular Ultrasound · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1186/s12947-025-00344-4 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Venous Thromboembolism Diagnosis and Management、Ultrasound in Clinical Applications、Hemodynamic Monitoring and Therapy

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) is a common cause of cardiovascular death worldwide. Due to its nonspecific clinical symptoms, PTE is easy to be missed or misdiagnosed. Pulmonary transit time (PTT) is a noninvasive cardiopulmonary hemodynamic index, which is the time required for a blood sample to pass through pulmonary circulation. This study is aim to establish a rabbit PTE model using auto-thrombus, evaluating the dynamic changes in a rabbit's heart structure and function at multiple time points before and after modeling by echocardiography and exploring the application value of PTT obtained by contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) in evaluating a PTE model. METHODS: Twenty-four healthy rabbits were intubated by femoral vein puncture to establish the PTE model. Echocardiography was performed before embolization, 2 h, 24 h, 3 days, 5 days, and 7 days after embolization to obtain conventional ultrasonic parameters. Then, CEUS was performed to obtain the PTT. RESULTS: Seventh day after modeling, nineteen rabbits were alive. Compared with pre-modeling, right heart parameters and heart rate in echocardiography were significantly impaired in the acute phase (2 and 24 h after modeling) and gradually returned to normal in the compensatory phase (3, 5, and 7 days after modeling). In contrast with conventional ultrasound parameters, PTT and nPTT revealed a gradually increasing trend at each time point. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis revealed...