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Transthoracic Echocardiography: The Basic Views

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Essential Echocardiography

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Abstract

Bedside transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is a valuable, noninvasive, point-of-care diagnostic tool that can be used for cardiac evaluation of symptomatic or hemodynamically unstable patients. Use of TTE in the perioperative setting, emergency medicine or critical care patient population can provide new objective data and guide clinical management. The increasing availability of TTE and minimal training required to become competent makes the bedside TTE examination complementary to TEE.

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Abbreviations

TTE:

Transthoracic echocardiography

TEE:

Transesophageal echocardiography

LV:

Left ventricle

FOCUS:

Focused cardiac ultrasound

ASE:

American Society of Echocardiography

ACEP:

American College of Emergency Physicians

PEA:

Pulseless electrical activity

LAX:

Long axis

LA:

Left atrium

LVOT:

Left ventricular outflow tract

RV:

Right ventricle

SAX:

Short axis

IVC:

Inferior vena cava

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Cardiovascular Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Texas Heart Institute at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, 6720 Bertner Ave. MC1-226, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Sonia Nhieu MD

Authors
  1. Sonia Nhieu MD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sonia Nhieu MD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, San Diego, California, USA

    Timothy M. Maus

  2. Division of Cardiovascular Anesthesiology and Critical Care , The Texas Heart Institute at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, Houston, Texas, USA

    Sonia Nhieu

  3. Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, San Diego, California, USA

    Seth T. Herway

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Parasternal LAX view (AVI 58,276 kb)

Parasternal SAX view of the AV (AVI 440,322 KB)

Parasternal SAX basal view of the mitral valve (AVI 22,444 KB)

Parasternal SAX mid-papillary view of the LV (AVI 41,569 KB)

Apical four-chamber view (AVI 38,502 KB)

Lack of respiratory variation in the IVC suggests that the patient is not fluid responsive (AVI 154,693 KB)

Parasternal SAX view showing an obliterated LV cavity during systole, suggestive of hypovolemia (AVI 113,911 KB)

Parasternal SAX view of a hemodynamically significant pericardial effusion (AVI 5,711 KB)

Apical four-chamber view demonstrating the McConnell’s sign, an echocardiographic finding in which the apical RV is spared. This patient had an acute pulmonary embolus (AVI 34,376 KB)

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Nhieu, S. (2016). Transthoracic Echocardiography: The Basic Views. In: Maus, T., Nhieu, S., Herway, S. (eds) Essential Echocardiography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34124-8_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34124-8_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-34122-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-34124-8

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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