title: Role of echocardiography in the diagnostic assessment and etiology of heart failure in the elderly--opacify, quantify, and rectify.
abstract: Echocardiography offers comprehensive, noninvasive, and relatively inexpensive tools for diagnosing cardiac pathology in the elderly. With an organized approach using two-dimensional echocardiography and Doppler echocardiography, clinicians can determine the systolic and diastolic left ventricular performance;estimate the cardiac output, pulmonary artery, and ventricular fill-ing pressures; and identify surgically correctable valve disease.Meanwhile, real-time three-dimensional echocardiography provides unprecedented volume data to quantify the left ventricular status. Tissue Doppler-derived myocardial velocity and strain imaging data provide extremely fine details about the regional variations in myocardial synchrony and predict responders to cardiac resynchronization therapy. Thus, echocardiographic tools provide the basis for determining when to attempt to rectify the left ventricular dysfunction with strategically placed, biventricular pace-maker leads.
authors.affiliation: Division of Medicine, Section of Cardiology, University of Arizona, Sarver Heart Center, 1501 N. Campbell Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85724-5037, USA.
authors.forename: Vincent L
authors.initials: VL
authors.lastname: Sorrell
authors.forename: Navin C
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Nanda
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D018618:Echocardiography, Doppler, Color; D019560:Echocardiography, Three-Dimensional; D006321:Heart / Q000503:physiopathology; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000209:etiology; D006801:Humans; D016277:Ventricular Function, Left / Q000502:physiology