Clinical applications of transpulmonary contrast echocardiography.

Background: The recent development of new fluorocarbon-based echocardiographic contrast agents that are capable of opacification of the left-sided cardiac chambers after intravenous injection is a major new advance in diagnostic cardiac imaging.

Methods And Results: This is a review article focusing on these novel contrast agents, new echocardiographic imaging techniques to optimize their efficacy, and their clinical applications. Specific clinical applications of these agents are (1) enhancement of endocardial border definition to improve assessment of regional and global left ventricular function, (2) myocardial perfusion imaging by intravenous contrast echocardiography, (3) augmentation of spectral and color flow Doppler images, and (4) tissue-specific targeting of microbubbles for delivery of therapeutic agents.

Conclusions: New intravenous contrast agents offer the possibility to assess myocardial perfusion echocardiographically. It is also possible to use these agents for delivery of therapeutic agents, including gene therapy.