Abstract
Right atrium (RA) has been a neglected heart chamber for long time. Only recently, the recognition of its role in assisting right ventricular filling, the demonstration of the predictive value of RA size in various pathological conditions, and the identification of the RA as a target and transit chamber for many interventional procedures have raised clinical interest in RA assessment. Accordingly, three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) has acquired an important role in RA evaluation. It allows to visualize internal structures of the RA with a richness of details that is comparable with the anatomical specimens. This capability is used more and more in the electrophysiology and catheterization laboratories and moreover it demonstrated to be useful in differentiating normal from pathological anatomical structures.
Recently, the updated guidelines on cardiac chamber quantification by echocardiography have introduced the RA volume as the recommended parameter to report RA size. 3DE demonstrated its capability to accurately measure RA volume, indipendently from any geometrical assumption about its shape, overcoming the limitations of two-dimensional echocardiography. Furthermore, 3DE enables measurement of RA volume in different moments of the cardiac cycle (maximum, minimum and pre-atrial contraction volumes), allowing evaluation of RA phasic function, in term of emptying volumes and fractions.
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Peluso, D., Miglioranza, M.H. (2019). The Right Atrium. In: Badano, L., Lang, R., Muraru, D. (eds) Textbook of Three-Dimensional Echocardiography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14032-8_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14032-8_23
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