ObjectiveThis study seeks to evaluate the diagnostic value of computed tomography (CT) in pulmonary hypertension.MethodPubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were searched to obtain the relevant English literature, and the retrieval time until June 2022. The quality of the included studies is evaluated using the QUADAS-2 tool. The quality of the included studies was assessed, followed by a meta-analysis, analyze heterogeneity, summarize sensitivity and specificity, draw the comprehensive subject working characteristics (sROC) curve, calculate the area under the curve and conduct subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis to find the source of the heterogeneity.ResultsA total of 12 articles were included, all with pulmonary artery diameter/liter aortic diameter >1 or 1 as the diagnostic criteria for pulmonary hypertension, and a total of 1,959 patients were included. Deek’s funnel plot analysis suggests that there is no significant publication bias (P = 0.102). The combined sensitivity was 0.652 (95% CI: 0.579, 0.719), combined specificity was 0.830 (95% CI: 0.796, 0.880), positive likelihood ratio was 3.837 (95% CI: 3.215, 4.579), negative likelihood ratio was 0.419 (95% CI: 0.346, 0.507), diagnostic odds ratio was 9.157 (95% CI: 6.748, 12.427) and area under the summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve was 0.84 (95% CI: 0.81, 0.87).ConclusionThe CT examination of pulmonary artery diameter/aortic artery hypertension is worthy of clinical application.

Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is a progressive pulmonary vascular disease characterized by pulmonary artery stenosis or obstructions resulting from insufficient thrombus resolution. Chemokine (C‐X‐C motif) ligand 10 (CXCL10) is a chemokine that contributes to the pathogenesis of many autoimmune diseases and cancers. The present study aims to investigate the levels of CXCL10 in patients with CTEPH throughout balloon pulmonary angioplasty (BPA) and its correlation with the improvement of pulmonary hemodynamics. Plasma CXCL10 levels were measured in 38 CTEPH patients with 100 BPA sessions and in 28 healthy controls. Correlations between CXCL10 and pulmonary hemodynamics were investigated. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were plotted to display the diagnostic value and the predictive ability for perioperative complications of CXCL10 and CXCL10‐related models. Nomograms were plotted to visualize the diagnostic value and the predictive ability for perioperative complications of CXCL10 and CXCL10‐related models. CXCL10 levels are higher in CTEPH patients compared with healthy controls (36.5 [95% confidence interval {CI}: 25.0–51.1] vs. 14.8 [95% CI: 11.1–30.9], p < 0.0001) and decreased significantly after BPA treatment (36.5 [95% CI: 25.0–51.1] vs. 24.7 [95% CI: 17.2–36.6], p < 0.0005). Preoperative CXCL10 levels positively correlated with mean right atrial pressure ( r = 0.25), systolic pulmonary artery pressure (PAP; r = 0.28), diastolic PAP ( r = 0.33), mean PAP ( r = 0.36), pulmonary vascular resistance ( r = 0.31), and N‐terminal pro‐B‐type natriuretic peptide (NT‐proBNP; r = 0.46). Furthermore, plasma CXCL10 levels adjusting for age and sex displayed a sensitivity of 86.0% and a specificity of 67.9% for discriminating CTEPH patients from healthy controls. Preoperative CXCL10 levels, in combination with NT‐proBNP, predicted perioperative complications with a sensitivity of 100.0% and a specificity of 46.9% as displayed in ROC analysis. In conclusion, circulating CXCL10 might contribute to the evaluation of disease severity in CTEPH patients and be useful to evaluate the treatment effect of BPA. Future studies are warranted to further study the relationship between pulmonary hemodynamics and circulating CXCL10.

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