Allows for assessment of cardiac chambers size, wall thickness, regional and global systolic function, and valvular morphology and motion.
Facilitate,assessments of blood flow velocity measurement of peak transvalvular velocity and time-velocity integrals.
TTE is the initial test of choice for evaluation of heart murmurs because of its not invasiveness, availability, accuracy, and relatively low cost.
TTE is the standard for aortic stenosis assessment and has largely relpaced invasive cardiac catheterization.
Sensitivity for detection of vegetations on ntive valves in infectious endocarditis is 60%.
Generally superior to TEE for imaging prosthetic aortic regurgitation.
Obtains images from the chest wall, with limitations that the ribs and air in the lung do not allow penetration of the ultrasound waves to penetrate the heart.
While nine of 10 thoracic echocardiography tests are appropriate the rate of change in care is 31.8% (Matulevicius SA et al).
Peak aortic velocity greater than 4M/S identifies most patients with hemodynamically severe aortic stenosis.
Transthoracic echocardiography Is a non-invasive tool that can screen patients for endocarditis with an overall sensitivity of 70% in native of valves and is closer to 50% for prosthetic valve endocarditis.
Transthoracic echocardiography has limitation by patient habitus, positioning and mechanical ventilation.