Echocardiogram (Echo)

The ‘echo’ or echocardiogram is an ultrasound scan of the heart. With the patient lying on his/her left side on a table beside the echocardiogram machinery, a technician passes a device that looks like a microphone - called a transducer – over the chest area at various angles. A jelly-like substance is placed at the tip of the transducer as an interface between the patient's skin and transducer.

The transducer sends sound waves into the heart which then "bounce off” anatomical structures in the heart and blood vessels and are then reflected back to the transducer. The sound waves detected by the transducer are converted into a moving image of the beating heart. This image is displayed on a TV monitor that is watched by the technician who moves the transducer to various positions on the patient's chest. A permanent record of this image can be recorded on videotape or a computer and sometimes on photographic paper.

Echocardiography uses high frequency radio waves (ultrasound) to display a picture of the heart at work. It shows the structure of the heart and is used to estimate blood flow and pressure in the heart and lungs. This is a widely used technique in medicine and it can be used to look at things like:

• Various structure abnormalities (for example, heart valves, such as determining if there is any leakage from the valves when they close and if blood flows through them normally)
• Some congenital heart defects, such as a “hole in the heart”
• The volume of blood being pumped from the heart with each beat

It is possible to estimate the blood pressure within the blood vessels. This is a very useful investigation in PH but at times the results can be inaccurate or misleading.

Echocardiography produces both moving images and still images, from which the size of the heart and the thickness of the heart muscle can be measured.