Routine Use of Contrast on Admission Transthoracic Echocardiography for Heart Failure Reduces the Rate of Repeat Echocardiography during Index Admission.

Background: The authors retrospectively evaluated the impact of ultrasound enhancing agent (UEA) use in the first transthoracic echocardiographic (TTE) examination, regardless of baseline image quality, on the number of repeat TTEs and length of stay (LOS) during a heart failure (HF) admission.

Methods: There were 9,115 HF admissions associated with admission TTE examinations over a 4-year period (5,337 men; mean age, 67.6 ± 15.

Imaging for Native Mitral Valve Surgical and Transcatheter Interventions.

There has been rapid progress in transcatheter therapies for mitral regurgitation. These developments have elevated the need for the imager to have a core understanding of the functional mitral valve anatomy. Pre- and intraoperative echocardiography for surgical mitral valve repair for mitral regurgitation has defined contemporary interventional imaging in many ways.

Hormone therapy and selective estrogen receptor modulators for prevention of coronary heart disease in postmenopausal women estrogen replacement from the cardiologist's perspective.

Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in women older than the age of 50 in the United States today. Traditional cardiovascular risk factors (hyperlipidemia, glucose intolerance, and hypertension) are more clearly associated with significant cardiovascular risk after menopause. The increased incidence of cardiovascular events in postmenopausal women and the evidence that cardiovascular disease on average manifests a decade later in women compared with men suggests that estrogen deficiency may predispose women to a higher cardiovascular risk.

Cardiac imaging in women: use of radionuclide myocardial perfusion imaging and echocardiography for acute chest pain.

Evidence for the value of noninvasive cardiac imaging in patients for the detection of ischemic heart disease has traditionally come from trials using male patients. The application of such technology for women is often presumptive. Because there is an overall lower prevalence of ischemic heart disease in women, difference in body habitus, and smaller heart size, cardiac imaging in women presents unique challenges for imaging specialists and cardiologists.