Manual on indications and performance of specific echocardiographic applications

The second manual on indications for and performance of echocardiography focusses on specific echocardiographic modalities and special problems in several patient cohorts. Practical aspects are discussed with priority. Established echocardiographic modalities are transesophageal, stress and contrast echocardiography. Modern technologies, such as 3D echocardiography and deformation imaging play an important role in nearly all scenarios of clinical echocardiography. This complete echocardiographic spectrum is incorporated into emergency and intensive care medicine, monitoring interventions of structural heart diseases, cardiac surgery, patients with cardiac assist devices, adult patients with congenital heart diseases and the care of highly infectious patients in pandemics. The diagnostic procedures of conventional and modern echocardiography are highlighted in this manual. The use of 3D echocardiography to characterize cardiac morphology and the application of deformation imaging to objectify cardiac function are already established in clinical practice. Stress echocardiography to detect myocardial ischemia and viability or to diagnose valvular heart diseases, assessment of coronary flow reserve to analyze myocardial perfusion and contrast echocardiography for left ventricular opacification and tumor characterization are increasingly being used to improve diagnostics. As mentioned for conventional echocardiography in the last manual of echocardiography in 2009, the modern features in echocardiography require standardized documentation and acquisition of certain images with optimized ultrasound settings, because conclusive and reproducible data analysis can only be performed if the image quality is sufficient.