Association of atheroma as assessed by intraoperative transoesophageal echocardiography with long-term mortality in patients undergoing cardiac surgery.

Aims: To determine whether the presence and severity of aortic atheroma predict long-term all-cause mortality among patients undergoing cardiac surgery.

Methods And Results: We followed 8,581 patients who underwent cardiac surgery and had routine intraoperative transoesophageal echocardiography for 2.8 years (range 0.

Utility of transesophageal echocardiography in identification of thrombogenic milieu in patients with atrial fibrillation (an ACUTE ancillary study).

The ACUTE trial randomly assigned patients who had atrial fibrillation (AF) of >2 days' duration to a transesophageal echocardiographically guided or a conventional strategy before cardioversion. In the 571 patients who underwent transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) in the ACUTE trial, we assessed the relative predictive value of baseline data derived by history, transthoracic echocardiography, and TEE for prediction of thrombus and adjudicated embolism (thromboembolism) as a composite end point. TEE was performed at 70 centers in 571 patients, 549 in the transesophageal echocardiographically guided group and 22 crossovers in the conventional group.

Relation of C-reactive protein correlates with risk of thromboembolism in patients with atrial fibrillation.

The relation between C-reactive protein, an inflammatory marker, and thromboembolic risk factors was investigated in 104 patients with atrial fibrillation and found that patients with transesophageal echocardiography identified thromboembolic risk factors had greater C-reactive protein levels than those without (1.00 vs 0.302 mg/dl).