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Echocardiography |
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Echocardiography is the most popular procedure in diagnosing heart disorders because it is noninvasive, and provides excellent images, while using no x-rays. Echocardiography is harmless, painless, widely used, and inexpensive. This procedure uses high-frequency ultrasound waves emitted by transducer and bounced off blood vessels and heart’s structure’s in order to produce a moving image. Such image appears on a video screen and is recorded on paper or a videocassette. By varying the angle of the probe and placement, a physician may view major vessels of the blood and heart from a variety of angles in order to obtain an accurate heart structure pictures and its function. To get greater clarity, or to analyze heart and back structures, a physician may pass a probe down the individual’s throat into the esophagus and record signals from right behind the heart; it is known as transesophageal echocardiography. Echocardiography may detect defects in heart wall motions, the blood volume being pumped from the heart with every beat, thickening, fluid accumulation between muscle of the heart and pericardium, as well as pericardium (disease of the sac around the heart). The major types of echocardiography include such ultrasound tests as M-mode, color Doppler, Doppler, and two dimensional. M-mode is the simplest method, in which a single ultrasound beam is aimed at the place of the heart being examined. Two-dimensional ultrasound it eh most popular method that is able to produce realistic two-dimensional images in computer-generated ‘slices’. Doppler ultrasound detects blood turbulence and movement and may be displayed in color. Doppler and Color Doppler echocardiography may display and confirm the velocity and direction of blood flow in the heart vessels and the chambers. The images let a physician to determine if the valves of the heart open and close properly, if blood flow is normal, if and how much heart valves leak when closed. Defected connections between heart chambers or vessels function and structure, as well as chambers may be determined.
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| Category |
Medical Procedures > E
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| Related Searches |
american society of echocardiography, echocardiography school |
| Date Submitted |
24-Oct-2005
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