Grundlagen der transthorakalen Echokardiographie beim herzchirurgischen Patienten

Echocardiography has emerged as an increasingly utilized tool to estimate the clinical status of patients in the emergency department. A specialized toolset that meets the specific requirements in an emergency department is commonly referred to as focused echocardiography. It is the overall aim of this article to give a step-by-step guidance of how to apply these basic tools in order to estimate the hemodynamics of a patient’s circulation. Focused echocardiography is mainly based on defined 2-D and color Doppler analyses. Furthermore, these are complemented by spectral Doppler analyses in order to gain information on crucial hemodynamic parameters, such as systolic pressure in the pulmonary artery (sPAP), increase in left ventricular (LV) filling pressure, stroke volume (SV) and therefore impacting cardiac output (HZV) and system vascular resistance (SVR).