Noncompaction cardiomyopathy: The role of advanced multimodality imaging techniques in diagnosis and assessment.

Noncompaction cardiomyopathy (NCCM) is a unique cardiomyopathy with a diverse array of genotypic and phenotypic manifestations. Its hallmark morphology consists of a bilayered myocardium with a compact epicardial layer and prominent trabeculations that comprise the noncompacted endocardial layer. The controversial diagnostic criteria for NCCM have been frequently discussed in the literature.

Resting echocardiography for the early detection of acute coronary syndromes in chest pain unit patients.

Aim: The purpose of this study is to assess the ability of resting echocardiography to detect an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) before the occurrence of ischemic electrocardiogram (ECG) changes or troponin-T elevations.

Methods: Four hundred and three patients who presented to the emergency room (ER) with chest pain, normal ECGs, and normal troponin-T levels were admitted to the cardiologist-run Chest Pain Unit (CPU) for further monitoring. They underwent serial resting echocardiography for monitoring of left ventricle wall motion (LVWM), ECG telemetry monitoring, and serial troponin-T measurements.

Live/real time three-dimensional transthoracic echocardiographic findings in an adult with complete atrioventricular septal defect.

Live/real time three-dimensional transthoracic echocardiography provided incremental value over two-dimensional transthoracic echocardiography in an adult patient with complete atrioventricular (AV) septal defect by (1) making a confident diagnosis of Rastelli type A defect, (2) providing en face view of all the five leaflets of the common AV valve, (3) diagnosing left ventricle to right atrial shunt, and (4) permitting more accurate quantitative assessment of regurgitant lesions.

Live/real time three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiographic evaluation of mitral and aortic valve prosthetic paravalvular regurgitation.

Thirteen patients already scheduled for surgery for repair of prosthetic paravalvular regurgitation underwent intraoperative real time two-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography (2D TEE) and live/real time three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography (3D TEE). In all patients, 3D TEE was able to provide more information regarding the location and size of the paravalvular defect as compared to 2D TEE. 3D TEE resulted in a more accurate localization of the defect and an estimation of the size of the defect that correlated much more closely with surgical findings when compared with 2D TEE.