Echocardiography Services

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The cardiac ultrasound service at UCH provides advanced echocardiographic services, strong training in all aspects of echocardiography, and contemporary echocardiography research. The program is growing in volume and has a team of experienced echocardiographers and highly competent sonographers. Recent accomplishments and planned developments include the following: 

Echocardiographic support for a variety of innovative interventional treatments has been a critical factor in the development of successful clinical and academic programs in catheter-based therapy for structural heart disease, alcohol ablation in obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and adult congenital heart disease interventions. 

Transthoracic and transesophageal 3-D echocardiography are now being used daily to provide this services to our patients. 
Improved image archiving and access to echo studies at remote workstations are now in place and soon will be available throughout the hospital on a WEB based platform. 

Stress echocardiography with dobutamine and treadmill are now routinely used in our laboratory in patients with known or suspected coronary disease. We are now introducing stress 3D echocardiograms as well as speckle imaging stress echocardiography. In addition, supine Echo/Doppler hemodynamic stress tests are performed in patients with valvular heart disease, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and congenital heart disease and for intracardiac shunt evaluations. We have one of very few laboratories performing transcraneal Doppler echocardiography during exercise for the evaluation of patent foramen ovale. 

Tissue Doppler imaging and speckle echocardiography have been introduced as new tools to evaluate myocardial mechanics and are now available for patient selection for resynchronization therapy and detection of subclinical myocardial dysfunction. 

The following techniques for evaluation of atherosclerosis burden are also available for both clinical research and clinical care:

• Carotid intima medial thickness measurements
• Brachial artery reactivity for evaluation of endothelial function
  

A variety of faculty participate in the echo reading service including Drs. Allen, Brieke, Daugherty, Quaife, Wolfel, Salcedo, Gill, Khanna and Groves.