Advanced Echocardiography Techniques: The Future Stethoscope of Systemic Diseases

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been showing patterns of extensive rise in prevalence in the contemporary era, affecting the quality of life of millions of people and leading the causes of death worldwide. It has been a provocative challenge for modern medicine to diagnose CVD in its crib, owing to its etiological factors being attributed to a large array of systemic diseases, as well as its non-binary hideous nature that gradually leads to functional disability. Novel echocardiography techniques have enabled the cardiac ultrasound to provide a comprehensive analysis of the heart in an objective, feasible, time- and cost-effective manner. Speckle tracking echocardiography, contrast echocardiography, and 3D echocardiography have shown the highest potential for widespread use. The uses of novel modalities have been elaborately demonstrated in this study as a proof of concept that echocardiography has a place in routine general practice with supportive evidence being as recent as its role in the concurrent COVID-19 pandemic. Despite such evidence, many uses remain off-label and unexploited in practice. Generalization of echocardiography at the point of care can become a much-needed turning point in the clinical approach to case management. To actualize such aspirations, we recommend further prospective and interventional studies to examine the effect of implementing advanced techniques at the point of care on the decision-making process and evaluate their effectiveness in prevention of cardiovascular morbidities and mortalities.

FIG 1

Fundamental principles of STE. (Color version of figure is available online.)

FIG 2

Steps of performing STE. (Color version of figure is available online.)

FIG 3

Contrast echocardiography as a structural imaging modality.

FIG 4

Contrast echocardiography in myocardial perfusion imaging. (Color version of figure is available online.)

FIG 5

3DE provides quantitative volumetric analysis without geometrical assumptions. (Color version of figure is available online.)

FIG 6

3DE obtains realistic anatomical representations of the cardiac valves. (Color version of figure is available online.)