Why the study?
Does echocardiographic-guided endomyocardial biopsy improve anatomic positioning accuracy compared to traditional fluoroscopic-guided technique in patients undergoing endomyocardial biopsy?
Does echocardiographic-guided endomyocardial biopsy improve anatomic positioning accuracy compared to traditional fluoroscopic-guided technique in patients undergoing endomyocardial biopsy?
Echocardiographic guidance provides superior anatomic positioning accuracy over traditional fluoroscopy during endomyocardial biopsy, which may be particularly important for cardiomyopathy patients or those at high risk for complications.
Fluoroscopic septal targeting may be unreliable in many patients; leaves open whether echocardiographic guidance improves biopsy safety or yield.
To assess the superior anatomic positioning of echocardiographic-guided endomyocardial biopsy compared to traditional fluoroscopic-guided technique, these two modalities were compared in a blinded fashion during femoral sheath endomyocardial biopsy in 21 patients, 19 being evaluated after orthotopic cardiac transplantation. The simultaneous fluoroscopic and echocardiographic imaging indicated that traditional fluoroscopic positioning of the bioptome against the septum is inaccurate in over half of patients undergoing biopsy. This finding should be considered in cardiomyopathy patients or those at high risk for biopsy-related complications.
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Bell et al. (1993) studied this question.
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