Assessment of Volume Status by Doppler US

Increasing cardiac output more than 15% following fluid administration was used as fluid responsiveness method by the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) guidelines. However, these strategies may promote over-resuscitation as most recommend continuing fluid administration until the patients are no longer VR. VR-based strategies do not assess elevations in right atrial pressure (RAP) or assess for venous congestion which could occur earlier.

The elevations of left atrial pressure can be seen clinically with hypoxia, cephalization on chest X-ray and B-lines on ultrasound resulting from pulmonary edema, while the elevation in right-sided pressure is much more difficult to detect.

It is possible that rightsided venous flow changes detect clinically important elevations in right atrial pressure that lead to venous congestion and end organ injury . Doppler flow patterns of hepatic veins (HV), portal vein (PV) and intra-renal veins (RV) are noninvasive and accurately identify early stages of right-sided venous congestion in patients who have cardiac dysfunction and congestive heart failure with elevated right atrial pressures . If HV, PV and RV can be validated as reliable measures of elevated RAP, such indicators might have utility in modulating fluid resuscitation in other critically ill patient populations.