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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 has become an invaluable tool in the modern practice of pediatric cardiology. Coupled with 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. 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 estimate cardiac systolic and diastolic function, to evaluate hemodynamics in critically ill patients and target specific intervention, to detect the presence of vegetation from endocarditis, to examine the cardiac structure, and to look 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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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinique des Grangettes, Chêne-Bougeries, Geneva, Switzerland

    Cécile Tissot

  2. Clinical Medical School University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Yogen Singh

  3. Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK

    Yogen Singh

  4. Heart Institute, Department of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital Colorado, University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA

    Adel K. Younoszai

  5. Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Intensive Care, Department of Pediatrics, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA

    Christina M. Phelps

Authors
  1. Cécile Tissot
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  2. Yogen Singh
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  3. Adel K. Younoszai
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  4. Christina M. Phelps
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Chief, Division of Cardiac Critical Care Medicine Executive Director, Telemedicine Co-director, Children’s National Heart Institute, Professor of Pediatrics, George Washington University School of Medicine, Children’s National Health System, Washington, DC, USA

    Ricardo A. Munoz

  2. Department of Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Victor O. Morell

  3. Associate Medical Director, CHCO Heart Institute Head, Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Program & Inpatient Services Director, Cardiac Intensive Care Unit Children’s Hospital Colorado, Tenured Professor of Pediatrics, Pediatric Cardiology and Intensive Care University of Colorado Denver, School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA

    Eduardo M. da Cruz

  4. Department of Pharmacy, Pediatric Critical Care, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Carol G. Vetterly

  5. Department of Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery, UPMC – Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Jose Pedro da Silva

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Tissot, C., Singh, Y., Younoszai, A.K., Phelps, C.M. (2020). Echocardiography. In: Munoz, R., Morell, V., da Cruz, E., Vetterly, C., da Silva, J. (eds) Critical Care of Children with Heart Disease . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21870-6_6

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