Transesophageal echocardiography

During the past ten years, two-dimensional echocardiography has become a major tool in the assessment of cardiovascular diseases. With the advent of pulsed, continuous wave, and color flow Doppler, the field of echocardiography is now accepted as the ideal noninvasive technique for assessing left and right ventricular function; determining valvular stenosis or regurgitation; assessing pericardial disease (i.e., constrictive pericarditis, pericardial effusion); determining diastolic dysfunction; estimating pulmonary artery pressures; examining for cardiac source of emboli; and evaluating for endocarditis. During the past five years, semi-invasive applications have included intracardiac echocardiography, guiding pericardiocentesis, assisting in percutaneous mitral valvotomy, catheter placement for ablation procedures, optimizing pacemaker hemodynamics, and using contrast agents to assess myocardial viability. With the miniaturization of transducers, bioengineers have developed probes small enough to be incorporated into the tip of a flexible gastroscope, thus accelerating the development of one of the most exciting and innovative techniques in cardiology, transesophageal echocardiography.