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Stress Echocardiography in Children

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Stress Echocardiography

The rationale for applying stress echocardiography in children is not different from application of the technique in adults. Sick children may need cardiac stress imaging, and stress echocardiography is becoming more common in the pediatric population. Obviously, to perform these procedures in the most adequate way, proper training of personnel and proper staffing of the pediatric stress laboratory are required to ensure the safety of patients and that the desired testing information is obtained. For these reasons, and as recommended by a recent 2006 Statement of the American Heart Association, pediatric testing should remain an integral part of pediatric cardiology training. A focused competence for the pediatric population should ideally be an integral part of the high-volume stress echocardiography laboratory. Diagnostic questions raised by children are extremely variable, and require a versatile approach of highly trained personnel. In our experience, pediatric stress echocardiography is performed as part of a team – between an adult cardiologist trained in stress echocardiography and a pediatric cardiologist directly involved in the treatment of the patient. Together, the two cardiologists discuss the indications, perform the examination, and utilize the results in light of the clinical context. In this way, inappropriateness is minimized and the diagnostic yield is optimized.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cardiology Department, Heart Centre University Hospital, 90185, Umea, Sweden

    Michael Henein

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  1. Eugenio Picano
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  2. Michael Henein
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Director General Institute of Clinical Physiology of Pisa, National Research Council, 1st Fisiologia Clinica, Via G. Moruzzi, 1, Pisa, 56124, Italy

    Eugenio Picano MD, PhD

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Picano, E., Henein, M. (2009). Stress Echocardiography in Children. In: Picano, E. (eds) Stress Echocardiography. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-76466-3_37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-76466-3_37

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