[Echocardiography].

Abstract

Advancement of echocardiography has been remarkable recently and has been useful to diagnose and manage chronic heart failure. Tissue Doppler echocardiography can measure myocardial motion velocity thereby enabling us to assess global and regional myocardial function. Mitral annular velocity in early diastole has been reported to correlate with left ventricular diastolic relaxation. The ratio of pulsed Doppler mitral flow velocity to the mitral annular velocity in early diastole is used to assess pulmonary capillary wedge pressure or left ventricular end-diastolic pressure. Comparison of time to peak of myocardial systolic velocity among various segments provides us important information on ventricular dyssynchrony, which is crucial for the success of cardiac resynchronization therapy. Finally, real-time three-dimensional echocardiography has emerged as a new modality to assess cardiac anatomical abnormalities. It is also promising to measure ventricular volume accurately.