Echocardiography is highlighted as the optimal non-invasive method for assessing left ventricular hypertrophy and guiding therapy in heart failure.
Although methodological problems still exist echocardiography provides the best available non-invasive method for assessing left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). Indeed, with recent technical advances two-dimensional echocardiography may provide a method that is at hast as accurate as the older angiographic techniques which are the best available invasive techniques. Further, computerised analysis of M-mode echocardiograms provides data about left ventricular function which are not readily available from any other technique. Because echocardiography is non-invasive it is particularly suitable for long-term studies of LVH, serial assessment of the ventricular consequences of valve disease and valve replacement and the effects of therapy. In addition, echocardiographic assessment of the left ventricle may allow the most appropriate form of therapy to be chosen in patients with congestive heart failure. The concepts built up during the extensive study of left ventricular disorders by echocardiography will be relevant to newer techniques such as computerised roentgenographic and positron emission tomography and nuclear magnetic resonance when they are applied in the same situations.
Nathaniel Reichek (Sat,) studied this question.