Echocardiographic measurement of aortic root diameter

One hundred and thirty patients with various heart diseases who underwent angiocardiography were studied to assess the clinical usefulness of echocardiographic aortic root diameter. The echocardiographic aortic root diameter was measured from the anterior surface of the anterior wall to the anterior surface of the posterior wall at end-diastole. A significant correlation was found between aortic root diameters measured by angiocardiograms and those by echocardiograms (r = 0.944, p less than 0.001). The aortic root diameter in normal subjects was 15 to 40 mm with a mean value of 29.0 mm. The corrected aortic root diameter by body surface area in normal subjects ranged from 10.1 to 29.5 mm/M2 with a mean value of 19.18 mm/M2. There appeared to be direct relationship between corrected aortic root diameter and the age. Echocardiography is a simple, safe, and reliable noninvasive method for estimating aortic root diameter.