Stress echocardiography is recommended for the assessment of asymptomatic patients with severe valvular heart disease (VHD) when there is discrepancy between symptoms and resting markers of severity. The aim of this study is to determine the prognostic value of exercise stress echocardiography in patients with common valve lesions. One hundred and fifteen patients with VHD (aortic stenosis (n=2...

1. BACKGROUND The objective of guidelines is to enhance appropriateness of practice, improve quality of care, lead to better patient outcomes, and help authorities to decide on the approval of diagnostic or therapeutic procedures. For patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), one of the greatest challenges of our heath care system, a variety of diagnostic procedures is available at varying f...

volume-rate three-dimensional stress echocardiography to assess inducible myocardial ischemia: a feasibility study. J Am Soc Echocardiogr 2010;23:628–35. 24. Nemes A, Geleijnse ML, Krenning BJ, Soliman OI, Anwar AM, Vletter WB et al. Usefulness of ultrasound contrast agent to improve image quality during real-time three-dimensional stress echocardiography. Am J Cardiol 2007;99:275–8. 25. Abdelm...

BACKGROUND Risk stratification after uncomplicated myocardial infarction is major clinical problem. In particular, the prognostic value of residual inducible ischaemia is still controversial. We compared the relative prognostic value of exercise ECG and dobutamine stress echocardiography performed in the early post-infarction period. METHODS Four hundred and six patients (53 female) aged 57 +...

positive defects are mainly observed in the inferoposterior, inferior, and apical myocardium, which could be explained by differences in regional blood flow during ventricular pacing [4] . Importantly, these perfusion abnor malities are more prominent during physical exercise compared with pharmacological stress using dipyridamole or adenosine [5] . Stress echocardiography is usually performed ...

OBJECTIVES Time to onset of regional relaxation (T(R)) has been proposed as a novel index of regional myocardial function. This study sought to prospectively establish the feasibility and variability of T(R) in healthy volunteers (CONTROL) and to examine its utility in patients with inducible ischemia (PATIENT). BACKGROUND Strain rate imaging (SRI) depicts myocardial deformation and enables q...

A 69-year-old woman with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy and chronic heart failure experienced repeated hospital admissions for acute pulmonary edema with no recognizable precipitating factor. Worsening mitral regurgitation was triggered by exercise echocardiography and significant intraventricular dyssynchrony was elicited by low-dose dobutamine stress echocardiography. After cardiac resynch...

Echocardiography is widely used to carry out non-invasive cardiac evaluation at the bedside and provides useful real-time information about hemodynamics. It can also be used to diagnose a stress-induced cardiomyopathy and its complications such as shock, heart failure and apical thrombus. Early diagnosis and management are important to prevent possible complications, and short-term follow-up by...

Transthoracic echocardiography is a primary non-invasive modality for investigation of heart transplant recipients. It is a versatile tool which provides comprehensive information about cardiac structure and function. Echocardiographic examinations can be easily performed at the bedside and serially repeated without any patient's discomfort. This review highlights the usefulness of Doppler echo...