This document was created by Alex Yartsev (dr.alex.yartsev@gmail.

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Interpretation of the aortic Doppler waveform

Depicted is a pulse-wave doppler of the descending aorta:

Vpeak is an index of contractility

Respiratory variation in Vpeak Obviously the left ventricle contractility
correlates with responsiveness to needs to be good to generate a normal
fluid challenge in the same way as peak flow velocity. A diseased ventricle
stroke volume variation does will generate crappy slow Vpeaks

vpeak
Respiratory variation
in Vpeak vpeak
Velocity (cm/s) 

Time (s)   Flow time 

Flow time corrected for heart rate (FTc) Mean acceleration of the aortic flow:
Like flow time, correlates with left ventricular afterload and
correlates with left ventricular afterload preload. Not specific, and so not used very often.
AND with left ventricular preload
i.e. this is your SVRI.
A loss of ventricular preload will also usually result
in an increase in afterload (systemic resistance
must rise to maintain a reasonable mean arterial
pressure) – and so this is also a surrogate
measure of left ventricular preload.

A shortened flow time will also occur with

hypothermia and heart failure.

From Bersten and Soni’s” Oh's Intensive Care Manual”, 6th Edition. Doppler measurement of cardiac output is well covered here