Role of Echocardiography in Guiding Transcatheter Aortic and Mitral Valve Replacement

The recent technical advances have revolutionized the field of percutaneous structural heart disease interventions. Multimodality imaging is pivotal to the success of these procedures and echocardiography is an integral part of this imaging. Echocardiography is essential for preprocedural evaluation as well as postprocedure assessment and follow-up of all such patients. In addition, for mitral valve interventions, echocardiography is also indispensable for intra-procedural guidance, although its role in guiding transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has diminished lately. A thorough understanding of echocardiography, especially for valvular assessment, and a high level of expertise in intraprocedural imaging are necessary for facilitating these procedures. This review describes the role of echocardiography in guiding TAVR and transcatheter mitral valve-in-valve replacement- the two most commonly performed percutaneous valve replacement procedures at present.