Indications, applications and future prospects of diagnostic examinations in clinical cardiology.
Nowadays there are various kinds of diagnostic examinations in the field of clinical cardiology. In this field, information concerning structure, dimension (hypertrophy and dilatation) and cardiac function is essentially important. For the diagnosis of valvular and congenital heart diseases and of cardiomyopathy, ultrasonic examinations are more useful; for ischemic heart disease, nuclear medicine is superior. Angiocardiography provides as much information but it is invasive. A combination of an exercise-test with the examinations mentioned above is useful for the detection of left ventricular and coronary reserves. The determinants of left ventricular reserve, being related to the prognosis of the patients, can be analyzed by exercise echocardiography. Exercise echocardiography can reveal instantaneous changes in myocardial ischemia during exercise. Regional and global left ventricular performances revealed by exercise radionuclide angiocardiography can lead us to a new interpretation of an exercise ECG.
D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000175:diagnosis; D004452:Echocardiography; D004562:Electrocardiography; D006321:Heart / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000503:physiopathology; D006330:Heart Defects, Congenital / Q000175:diagnosis; D006331:Heart Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans; D009200:Myocardial Contraction; D011379:Prognosis; D011877:Radionuclide Imaging