The suprasternal approach to recording aortic valve prostheses: a comparison with the precordial and subxiphoid approaches.

We evaluated 56 consecutive patients echocardiographically 9 days to 104 months after aortic valve replacement by the precordial, subxiphoid and suprasternal approach. In 11 patients, the mitral valve had also been replaced. For comparison, a subjective grading system (score 1 up to 3) was applied to the records obtained from each approach.