Primate echocardiography 101 applied cardiac ultrasound measures

Jose Banchs, MD, FACC, FASE

Associate Professor of Medicine

Cardiology Department

Director, Echocardiography

jbanchs@mdanderson.org

www.cancerandtheheart.org

Echocardiography

• Portable

• Relatively inexpensive

• Systems size decreasing, quality improving, improved resolution

• Safe

• Measures: Dimension (2D), Flow

• Easy to use

• Reproducibility

Rules of measuring

• Landmarks are base / MV annulus, Apex.

• Base disks carry bigger volume.

• Apex orientation stays the same.

• Use epicardium as guide.

• Shave paps & trabeculae specular echos.

• Walls have curves.

• Apex gets the skinniest.

“When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it: but when you cannot measure it… your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.”

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, lecture to the Institute of Civil Engineers, 1883

“things are not what they look like, it’s what they measure to be”