OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography for the diagnosis of congenital obstructive aortic arch anomalies in children and compare it with transthoracic echocardiography and other MR imaging techniques (ECG gated T1-weighted spin-echo imaging and gradient-echo cine imaging). MATERIALS AND METHODS Contrast-enhanced mag...

INTRODUCTION Left ventricular non-compaction is a rare congenital heart disease, and is most commonly diagnosed via two-dimensional echocardiography according to echocardiographic criteria. Recently, transthoracic three-dimensional echocardiography has become available in the clinical setting. CASE PRESENTATION We present two isolated cases of left ventricular non-compaction from Japan (in an...

AIM We validated transthoracic echocardiographic measurements of left atrial appendage flow velocity by comparing them with transoesophageal echocardiographic measurements. METHODS AND RESULTS Eighty-four consecutive patients (mean age, 64.6 years) with various cardiac diseases, who underwent both transthoracic echocardiography and transoesophageal echocardiography were studied. Thirty-two pa...

AIMS The administration of echocardiographic contrast agents has been shown to improve accuracy and be cost-effective in patients with suboptimal endocardial definition. We sought to investigate the implementation of contrast agents in clinical practice. METHODS AND RESULTS An electronic questionnaire was devised to determine the use of contrast ultrasound agents in clinical practice and sent...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Transesophageal echocardiography has a high yield for detecting potential cardiac sources of embolism in patients with clinical risk factors for cardioembolism or unexplained stroke. The yield in other stroke subtypes is unknown. METHODS We classified 145 consecutively admitted patients into stroke subtypes based on clinical findings, brain imaging, and carotid ultrasou...

EDITOR,-We read with interest the article by O'Sullivan et al.' The nine presented patients went through extensive investigations, including echocardiograms in all cases. Yet, no evidence of an embolic or atheromatous aetiology was found. Unfortunately, the authors failed to mention whether the echocardiography was transthoracic or transoesophageal. We had experience with a 29-year-old woman, w...

Radiologic Procedure Rating Comments RRL* X-ray chest 9 ☢ CT chest with IV contrast 8 ☢ ☢ ☢ CT chest and abdomen without IV contrast 8 ☢ ☢ ☢ ☢ CT chest and abdomen without and with IV contrast 8 ☢ ☢ ☢ ☢ CTA chest with IV contrast 8 ☢ ☢ ☢ CTA chest and abdomen with IV contrast 8 ☢ ☢ ☢ ☢ MRA chest without and with IV contrast 8 O MRA chest and abdomen without and with IV contrast 8 O US echocardi...

In sicker hearts, right atrial pressure (an estimation of right ventricle preload) are not equivalent to left atrial pressure (an estimation of left ventricle preload). Both right and left atrial pressures are frequently estimated using invasive techniques and also transthoracic echocardiography. While right atrial pressure is easy to obtain with transthoracic echocardiography, the assessment o...