The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) and the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) have jointly released a new document that updates the worldwide standard for quantifying cardiac chamber size and function on ultrasound scans.
Titled "Recommendations for Cardiac Chamber Quantification by Echocardiography in Adults: An Update from the American Society of Echocardiography and the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging," the document appears in the January issue of the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography (Vol. 28:1, pp. 1-39.e14).
Since the guideline was first written in 2005, new developments have occurred such as real-time 3D echo and myocardial deformation imaging, as well as the need to update normal values and recommendations for measurements.
The current recommendations are based on considerably larger numbers of normal subjects, compiled from multiple databases to improve the reliability of the reference values, according to the societies. Now that there are new normal 2D and 3D values for size and function for all four chambers of the heart, jointly derived by the European and U.S. societies, this allows echo scans to be interpreted uniformly across the globe, said Dr. Roberto Lang, co-chair of the writing group.
Lang will conduct a live webinar, including a question-and-answer section, on February 11 at 1 p.m. EST. It will be available for free to all ASE members and open to all other clinicians for $25. The webinar will also be archived at www.ASEUniversity.org.
The full guidelines are available on the journal website, as well as at www.asecho.org/guidelines.
