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Echocardiography

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Critical Care of Children with Heart Disease

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Abstract

Echocardiography in its current form, several generations removed from its origin in the 1950s [1], has become an invaluable tool in a modern cardiac intensive care unit environment. Coupled with a clinical examination and monitoring techniques, echocardiography can provide real-time rapid and reliable diagnostic answers that are invaluable to patient care. This noninvasive test can be used to reliably evaluate cardiac anatomy of both normal hearts and those with congenital heart disease and has replaced cardiac angiography for the preoperative diagnosis of the majority of congenital heart lesions [2–4]. In congenital or acquired cardiac disease, echocardiography may be further used to estimate intracardiac pressures and gradients across stenotic valves and vessels, determine the directionality of blood flow and pressure gradient across a defect, and examine the coronary arteries. Within the realm of critical care, echocardiography is useful to quantitative cardiac systolic and diastolic function, detect the presence of vegetations from endocarditis, and examine the cardiac structure for the presence of pericardial fluid and chamber thrombi. As with all tools, however, a thorough understanding of its uses and limitations are necessary before relying upon the information it provides.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Intensive Care, Department of Pediatrics, The Children’s Hospital of Denver, Aurora, CO, USA

    Cécile Tissot

Authors
  1. Cécile Tissot
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  2. Adel K. Younoszai
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  3. Christina Phelps
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Correspondence to Cécile Tissot .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Children's Hospital, Pittsburgh, 5th Ave. 3705, Pittsburgh, 15213, USA

    Ricardo Munoz

  2. School of Medicine, Children's Hospital, University of Pittsburgh, Fifth Ave. 3705, Pittsburgh, 15213, USA

    Victor Morell

  3. Chemin de Normanie 2, Geneve, 1206, Switzerland

    Eduardo Cruz

  4. Children's Hospital, Pittsburgh, 5th Ave. 3705, Pittsburgh, 15213, USA

    Carol Vetterly

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag London Limited

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Tissot, C., Younoszai, A.K., Phelps, C. (2009). Echocardiography. In: Munoz, R., Morell, V., Cruz, E., Vetterly, C. (eds) Critical Care of Children with Heart Disease. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-262-7_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-262-7_6

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  • Print ISBN: 978-1-84882-261-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-84882-262-7

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