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An electronic book containing a large collection of 3D echocardiographic images and videos to help echocardiographers, cardiac surgeons and clinical cardiologists.
Updated version 2012
Luigi P. Badano and Denisa MuraruDepartment of cardiac, thoracic and vascular sciencesUniversity of Padua, School of Medicine Padua (Italy)
Three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) enables an easier, accurate and reproducible interpretation of the complex cardiac anatomy, overcoming the intrinsic limitations of conventional echocardiography. The availability of unprecedented views of cardiac structures from any perspective in the beating heart provides valuable clinical information and new levels of confidence in diagnosing heart disease. One major advantage of 3DE is the improvement in the accuracy and reproducibility of chamber volume measurement by eliminating geometric assumptions and errors caused by foreshortened views. Another benefit of 3DE is the realistic en face views of heart valves, enabling a better appreciation of the severity and mechanisms of valve diseases in a unique, noninvasive manner.
In previous years, the Atlas of real-time three-dimensional echocardiography has been one of the most visited sections of the website of the European Association of Echocardiography. Since its launch in December 2008, it has been visited by 4546 unique visitors for a total number of 13656 pages visited witnessing the interest of EAE members for this new echo technique.
Since 2009, three-dimensional echocardiography has experienced significant technological improvement and the technique has been implemented in the most advanced echo labs and cardiac surgery operating rooms to provide crucial morphological and quantitative information to improve patient management.
However, the technique is still not widespread. One of the reasons of this lack of wide clinical acceptance is that the proper and effective use of this new way to look at cardiac anatomy and function using ultrasounds requires an appropriate training. The first edition of the Atlas was to help echocardiographers and cardiac surgeons, but also clinical cardiologists, to understand the basic principles of 3DE and interpret 3DE images.
In this completely new version of the Atlas, we present the current 3DE techniques, the examination protocols for a comprehensive 3DE study and the clinical applications of the technique. All these topics will be addressed by few introductory sentences and illustrated by 395 movies, 160 figures, 14 drawings and anatomic specimens, obtained from more than 250 original clinical cases of acquired and congenital heart diseases..
Luigi P. Badano and Denisa Muraru
Our mission: To reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease
