We want to congratulate Steckelberg et al. for their interesting study published in the May 2013 issue of JASE , the major part of their article being devoted to invasively deriving mean pulmonary artery pressure (MPAP) from systolic pulmonary artery pressure (SPAP). They demonstrated accurate prediction using the following equation:
MPAP = 0.61 SPAP + 1.95 mm Hg .
This equation was derived in 198 patients studied using fluid-filled catheters and further validated in 109 patients, all with a broad spectrum of etiologies and severity of pulmonary hypertension. For the sake of clarity for JASE readers, it may be recalled that nearly 10 years ago, our group was the first to demonstrate that MPAP and SPAP had a strong linear relationship in patients with precapillary pulmonary hypertension prospectively studied using high-fidelity pressure catheters, according to the following equation:
MPAP = 0.61 SPAP + 2 mm Hg .