What Is Electrocardiography? | Sunflower Hospital Nagpur | Dr Jay Deshmukh:- Echocardiography is a test that uses sound waves to create moving pictures of your heart. Sound waves that rebound from the heart are used to see the size, shape and movements of the heart and its 4 chambers and valves. The Doppler principle is used to assess the anatomy of the heart valves and can detect if the heart valves are stenosed or regurgitant.

What are the indications of using 2-dimensional echocardiography?

1.   A 2 D echo is essentially used to see if any change has occurred in the cardiac function. Changes that if detected can influence the treatment of the patient.

Is it a very complicated test?

1.  It is a simple, noninvasive, painless, relatively inexpensive test. It takes about 30 minutes. No prior preparation is required to do the test.

What important information can one get from the test?

1. It gives important information about the heart. It informs us about the presence of fluid in the heart’s covering. This is known as pericardial effusion. If the fluid is large in volume, it can seriously affect the hearts pumping. This is known as pericardial tamponade.

What about the heart muscle?

1. The heart is a pump. The heart muscle known as myocardium has to contract and relax well for effective blood circulation throughout our body.  A poorly functioning heart muscle is seen after a heart attack or a weakened heart muscle can occur due to previous viral infection or diabetes. The contractility of the heart due to its muscles is very well assessed by echocardiography.

What about the heart valves?

1. What Is Electrocardiography? | Sunflower Hospital Nagpur | Dr Jay Deshmukh:-  The heart has 4 valves. They allow the proper flow of blood unidirectionally. They need to open up fully or close completely during the cardiac cycle. The movements of heart valves, the dimensions of the heart valves are best seen by echocardiography. A continuous or pulsed Doppler signal is used for this test. Colour doppler can virtually see the blood jets across the various valves. Echocardiography can detect the presence of blood clots in the cardiac chamber as well as any tumours in the heart. The Doppler principle is used for tissue motion and velocity measurement.

Can echocardiogram be used in congenital heart disease?

1. What Is Electrocardiography? | Sunflower Hospital Nagpur | Dr Jay Deshmukh:- In kids and even in adults it is a very important modality. Echocardiography can detect the presence of holes in the 2 septae of the heart. These septae divide the heart into 4 chambers. These holes are known as atrial or ventricular septal defects. These holes can be closed by surgery or can be patched up by devices without surgery. It can pick up many other congenital heart defects including those affecting the large blood vessel aorta or the pulmonary trunk.

Can echocardiography detect congenital heart defects before birth?

1. Certainly, it is an important tool to detect congenital heart defects even when the baby is in the mother’s womb.
2. Can echocardiography cause damage to our body due to radiation? Is it a safe test? As the test is based on sound waves principles it carries no radiation. It is absolutely safe without any complications. It can be used at any age and is safe in pregnancy.

What is trans oesophageal echocardiography?

1. In some individuals the transthoracic approach is difficult? The special echocardiography probe is passed in the oesophagus after proper conscious sedation. The heart valves, chambers, clots and tumours are better seen by this procedure.

Is echocardiography useful to decide on coronary artery bypass surgery?

1. The gold standard test would be coronary angiogram. In follow up cases after bypass surgery, an echocardiogram is done to assess the function of the heart muscle.

Why is it known as the echo?

1. The ultrasonic sound waves that emanate from the transducer are reflected back from the heart to the transducer. These are fed to the inbuilt computer of the machine. Hence the reflection of these sound waves is like an echo. Hence the name echocardiography.

What Is Electrocardiography? | Sunflower Hospital Nagpur | Dr Jay Deshmukh:- Echocardiography has come a long way since the Swedish Physician Inge  Edler used it for the first time. It is a simple,  noninvasive, safe and inexpensive test. Along with ECG and stress test, it is a value-added test to assess the heart in a very simple and reliable way.