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Echocardiographic Signs of Ischemia

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Stress Echocardiography

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Abstract

The response of left ventricular function to ischemia is monotonous and independent of the stress employed [1]. The same echocardiographic signs can be found in transient ischemia and acute infarction. The difference lies in the time sequence, and from an echocardiographic viewpoint, myocardial ischemia is a “reversible” myocardial infarction. The cardinal sign of ischemia is the transient, regional wall motion abnormality – the cornerstone of diagnosis. There are other ancillary signs of severity which may occasionally help in disease severity stratification, such as left ventricular cavity dilation, acute severe mitral insufficiency, fall of stroke volume, and the appearance of ultrasound B-lines in the chest. In cutting-edge stress echocardiography environments, today wall motion analysis can be coupled during vasodilator stress with assessment of coronary flow reserve – further expanding our diagnostic and prognostic information during stress echocardiography.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Nicola Gaibazzi PhD

  2. Department of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, 450 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Eugenio Picano PhD

Authors
  1. Nicola Gaibazzi PhD
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  2. Eugenio Picano PhD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicola Gaibazzi PhD .

Table of Contents Video Companion

Table of Contents Video Companion

  • See stress echo primer, case 6 (intracoronary contrast stress echo).

  • See also in section “Illustrative cases: Case numbers 26, 27, and 28” (by Nicola Gaibazzi, MD, Parma, Italy).

  • Springer Extra Materials available at http://extras.springer.com/2015/978-3-319-20957-9

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Gaibazzi, N., Picano, E. (2015). Echocardiographic Signs of Ischemia. In: Stress Echocardiography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20958-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20958-6_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20957-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-20958-6

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