The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) has released a guide to help manage pediatric patients with congenital heart defects both before and after surgical intervention.
The document, titled "Multimodality Imaging Guidelines of Patients With Transposition of the Great Arteries," was done in collaboration with the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) and the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT).
The guide's contributors reviewed and analyzed a variety of scientific evidence to offer recommendations for optimal multimodality image monitoring of these patients.
The goal is to describe the role of diagnostic imaging, including echocardiography, cardiovascular MR, cardiovascular CT, and x-ray angiography, and how each modality helps identify abnormalities and assess severity for cardiologists to make clinical decisions about the most appropriate treatment, according to the ASE.
The full guideline document is available on the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography website and will be published in the July 2016 print issue.
