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Membranous Septal Length Case Review

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In this next case, we're gonna review how to measure membranous septal length.

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And we're starting with an axial image. And this is just my standard pacs.

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I'm gonna use the, uh, m p R features to do some double obliques,

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but I just wanna point out the membranous septum here on axial images.

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It's right here that lives underneath the aortic valve.

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So you can see the aortic valve leaflets here,

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and then you can see the membranous septum and it's just above the level of the,

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um, muscular part of the septum.

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Now you notice that this is a little bit motion of the acquisition

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and a little bit noisy.

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The motion is related to the fact that this is the 20% phase, like I mentioned,

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which is the,

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usually the optimal phase for measuring the aortic gainless in TAVR patients.

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So that's what we required for this particular patient.

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So what you wanna do to get the member septal length here is you wanna

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first make sure that you have a good look at the member septum. And honestly,

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usually the coronal view gives you a, a great look,

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but you just want to put your cross hairs on the, on the septum,

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make sure you have it in profile.

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And then what you wanna do is you want to basically put your cross hairs in the

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middle of the aortic valve. And again, like we've done with previous cases,

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you wanna make yourself perpendicular theoric valve with the axial view

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and then confirm that on your short axis view.

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And then from here you can actually scroll down from your short axis view

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and identify the meran septum, which you see right here. That's this thin piece,

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right? You see all the muscle, muscle, muscle, muscle. This is left atrium,

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this is interatrial septum. And then this little bit here is the ous septum.

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So you identify that thin little piece and then you can rotate your plane to

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make sure that you're bisecting that thin piece of membranous septum and just

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ignore the red plane here. It's not really, um, relevant to what we're doing.

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And then you take a look at your long access planes and find the one that's

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bisecting. The ous septum should be on the right hand side of the image.

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And sure enough, this one, we don't see the ous septum,

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but we do see it over here. So I'm gonna use that for my measurement.

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There's a ous septum right there. And what I'm gonna do,

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I'm gonna move that cross hairs outta the way,

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and I'm just gonna find the bottom of the aortic valve

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here where it inserts relative to the membrane septum.

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And then I'm gonna make my measurement from the bottom of the aortic valve to

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the membrane septum. And I get roughly 10 millimeters here.

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So that's actually a pretty long emran septum. In theory,

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this patient should have a relatively high margin of error for, uh,

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placement of the TAVR device.

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In terms of risk of subsequent need for a pacemaker,

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generally member,

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their ideal is to have the device sitting above the level of the muscular part

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of the septum, so no

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Deeper than the membranous septum.

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And so a nine millimeters is a pretty long membranous septum and a,

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a decent safety margin for this patient.

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The key number that we usually think of,

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and it's out there in the literature and the guidelines,

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is around eight millimeters, membranous septum, less than eight millimeters,

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and you start worrying about increased risk for conduction abnormalities after

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the TAVR procedure.

Report

Faculty

Stefan Loy Zimmerman, MD

Associate Professor of Radiology and Radiological Science

Johns Hopkins Medicine Department of Radiology and Radiological Science

Tags

Vascular

Idiopathic

Congenital

Cardiac valves

Cardiac Chambers

Cardiac CT (SCCT Cat B1 Video Case)

Cardiac

CTA

CT

Acquired/Developmental