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Echocardiography in Pregnancy: Part 1

  • Echocardiography (JM Gardin, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of maternal mortality, and clinical diagnosis of CVD in women during pregnancy is challenging. Pregnant women with known heart disease require careful multidisciplinary management by obstetric and medical teams to assess for maternal and fetal risk. Echocardiography is a safe and effective diagnostic tool indicated in pregnant women with cardiac symptoms or women with known cardiac disease for appropriate selection of women who require close monitoring of cardiac condition and valvular function. Echocardiography is the single most important clinical tool to diagnose and manage heart disease during pregnancy. Echocardiography is able to characterize cardiac structural abnormalities and corresponding hemodynamic changes, identifies heart diseases that are poorly tolerated in pregnancy, and helps select patients who may require a cesarean delivery because of hemodynamic instability. An understanding of the physiologic alterations including increased heart rate, blood volume, and cardiac output as well as the decreased vascular resistance is important for early recognition and monitoring of the consequences of cardiac disease in pregnancy. This review will focus on common acquired cardiac lesions encountered during pregnancy and the role of echocardiography in the diagnosis and management of these diseases.

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Correspondence to Tasneem Z. Naqvi.

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Conflict of Interest

Shuang Liu, Uri Elkayam, and Tasneem Z. Naqvi declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Echocardiography

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Video 1

Apical four chamber view in a 31-year-old female with postpartum cardiomyopathy. (MP4 652 kb)

Video 2

Short-axis view of the mitral valve in a 32-year-old pregnant female showing severe rheumatic mitral valve stenosis (MP4 9564 kb)

Video 3

Apical four chamber view in the same patient showing turbulent flow across a stenotic mitral valve and mild mitral regurgitation (MP4 6311 kb)

Video 4

Transesophageal short-axis view at the mid esophageal level showing stenotic aortic valve with commissural fusion and thickening and a central coaptation gap that resulted in moderate aortic insufficiency. (MP4 39225 kb)

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Liu, S., Elkayam, U. & Naqvi, T.Z. Echocardiography in Pregnancy: Part 1. Curr Cardiol Rep 18, 92 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11886-016-0760-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11886-016-0760-7

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