A 70-year-old man with end-stage heart failure and a continuous-flow left ventricular assist device received repeated electrical discharges from his biventricular implantable cardiac defibrillator. Although the electrocardiogram demonstrated ventricular fibrillation, the patient was awake and in no distress. A focused transthoracic echocardiogram was performed to assess ventricular function rev...

Transoesophageal cross-sectional echocardiography has special advantages when investigating the interatrial septum which is imaged perpendicularly without echo dropouts from an oesophageal transducer position. The technique was successfully used in 19 out of 20 patients (95%) with an ostium secundum atrial septal defect and in 30 control subjects. In all of the latter the interatrial septum was...

BACKGROUND Complex anatomy of intra-cardiac structures requires spatial orientation of image in three dimensions for better understanding and enhanced image interpretation. We evaluated the feasibility and efficacy of the emerging 'real-time three-dimensional transthoracic echocardiography' technique for comprehensive assessment of cardiac anatomy, physiology, pathomorphology and pathophysiolog...

BACKGROUND Hypoxemia is common in pulmonary hypertension (PH) and may be partly related to ventilation/perfusion mismatch, low diffusion capacity, low cardiac output, and/or right-to-left (RL) shunting. METHODS To determine whether true RL shunting causing hypoxemia is caused by intracardiac shunting, as classically considered, a retrospective single center study was conducted in consecutive ...

One case of inferior vena cava type sinus venosus defect is reported. It is likely to be missed on transthoracic echocardiography. Transesophageal echocardiography is useful. Unlike superior sinus venosus defect which are easily visible on transesophageal echocardiography, a careful search is needed to detect inferior sinus venosus defects. All patients with unexplained right ventricular volume...

In recent years, murine models have become the primary avenue for studying the molecular mechanisms of cardiac dysfunction resulting from changes in gene expression. Transgenic and gene targeting methods can be used to generate mice with altered cardiac size and function, and as a result, in vivo techniques are needed to evaluate their cardiac phenotype. Transthoracic echocardiography, pulse wa...