What is Echocardiography?

Echocardiography is a diagnostic technique that employs ultrasound to produce an image of the beating heart in real time. A piezoelectric transducer element is used to emit short bursts of high frequency, low intensity sound through the chest wall to the heart and then detect the reflections of this sound as it returns from the heart. Because the movement patterns and shape changes of several regions of the heart correlate with cardiac function and as changes in these patterns consistently appear in several types of cardiac disease, echocardiography is frequently used technique for evaluation of the heart.

The Echocardiography has several merits over other diagnostic tests of cardiac function as listed below:

• It produces an image instantaneously, which allows rapid diagnosis in emergent situations.
• It may be repeated as frequently as needed allowing serial evaluation of a given disease process.
• It is a safe procedure.
• It is painless.
• It is flexible and can be used with transducers placed on the chest wall, inside oral cavities such as the oesophagus or stomach, or inside the heart and vessels.
• It can be transported almost anywhere with ease including the bedside, operating room, etc.

Also read: Ultrasound Scanning Techniques