MI and Viability: The Pivotal Role of Echocardiography
MI and Viability: The Pivotal Role of Echocardiography
Echocardiography has a central role for the diagnosis and management of patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease. Besides the fact that it provides an essential role in the differential diagnosis of patients presenting with chest pain in the emergency department, echocardiography provides a comprehensive non-invasive haemodynamic and functional assessment of those patients. Stress echocardiography in many institutions is now the preferred stress modality associated with imaging as it is cost-effective and does not use ionizing radiation. It is used for assessing patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease, risk stratification and for assessing myocardial viability. The recent introductions of ultrasound contrast agents as well as deformation imaging techniques have eliminated the last limitations of stress echocardiography such as image quality and quantification, respectively.
A lot has changed over the past 10 years in the world of echocardiography. The developments of other cardiac imaging modalities and in particular cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (cMR) and CT angiography provided a stimulus for the development of new sequences and modalities in echocardiography such as deformation imaging and three-dimensional echocardiography (3D-Echo). As a consequence, echocardiography has become a multimodality technique on its own rights. The widespread use of echocardiography has allowed for the collection of a large amount of outcome data so that today it is inconceivable for any patient with known or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD) not to have at least one echocardiographic examination. Finally, established training and a well-structured accreditation programmes provide the platform for regulating the practice of echocardiography.
Abstract and Introduction
Abstract
Echocardiography has a central role for the diagnosis and management of patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease. Besides the fact that it provides an essential role in the differential diagnosis of patients presenting with chest pain in the emergency department, echocardiography provides a comprehensive non-invasive haemodynamic and functional assessment of those patients. Stress echocardiography in many institutions is now the preferred stress modality associated with imaging as it is cost-effective and does not use ionizing radiation. It is used for assessing patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease, risk stratification and for assessing myocardial viability. The recent introductions of ultrasound contrast agents as well as deformation imaging techniques have eliminated the last limitations of stress echocardiography such as image quality and quantification, respectively.
Introduction
A lot has changed over the past 10 years in the world of echocardiography. The developments of other cardiac imaging modalities and in particular cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (cMR) and CT angiography provided a stimulus for the development of new sequences and modalities in echocardiography such as deformation imaging and three-dimensional echocardiography (3D-Echo). As a consequence, echocardiography has become a multimodality technique on its own rights. The widespread use of echocardiography has allowed for the collection of a large amount of outcome data so that today it is inconceivable for any patient with known or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD) not to have at least one echocardiographic examination. Finally, established training and a well-structured accreditation programmes provide the platform for regulating the practice of echocardiography.
