Femoral vein pulsatility: a simple tool for venous congestion assessment

BACKGROUND: Femoral vein Doppler (FVD) is simpler than the VExUS score which is a multimodal scoring system based on combination of IVC diameter, hepatic venous Doppler, portal vein pulsatility and renal vein Doppler, may be useful in assessing right ventricular overload and signs of venous congestion. There is limited data on the relationship between FVD and VExUS score. RESULTS: Adult post-cardiac surgery patients were assessed for venous congestion using the VExUS score and FVD. Agreement between VExUS and FVD was studied using Kappa test, sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV for VExUS and FVD was calculated keeping CVP as gold standard. In total, 107 patients were enrolled, with a mean age of 55.67 ± 12.76. The accuracy of VExUS and FVD for detecting venous congestion was 80.37 (95% CI of 71.5 to 87.4) and 74.7 (95% CI of 65.4 to 82.6), respectively. The level of agreement between FVD and VExUS was moderate (Kappa value of 0.62, P < 0.001) while the agreement between FVD and CVP was weak (Kappa value of 0.49, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: FVD has good accuracy for detecting venous congestion and shows moderate agreement with VExUS grading. With potentially easier physical accessibility and a shorter learning curve for novices, it may be a simple and valuable tool for assessing venous congestion. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13089-023-00321-w.