Key result
Real-time 3D echocardiography provides valuable non-invasive volumetric assessment in congenital heart disease, though it currently remains secondary to conventional 2D echocardiography due to technical limitations.
Real-time 3D echocardiography offers superior volume assessment in congenital heart disease compared to 2D echocardiography, though its application in complex pediatric cases remains time-consuming.
Recent advancement of technology of medical imaging systems has enabled in-depth real time spatiotemporal diagnosis of human heart disease.It is regardless to mention that prognosis of cardiac disease is based critically on prompt 3 dimensional (3D) diagnosis of a structural anomaly, functional analysis and followed by a proper treatment.Although we are in current era of 3D skills in the spotlight, yet real time 3D echocardiography (RT3DE) is not so appealing to very busy pediatric and adult cardiologists.Mental reconstruction of harvested 2 dimensional (2D) echocardiographic images is a still much faster and simpler way to understand complex cardiac structural anomaly than doing a few more steps for subsequent data analysis with a software program of RT3DE.On the other hand, considering superiority of function of volume assessment, RT3DE can be very useful in clinical application as it can provide numeric data more precisely than morphologic visual assessment of each cardiac chambers that enables assessment longitudinally during the clinical course.In congenital heart disease (CHD), volume or pressure overloaded condition frequently results in distortion of septal planes followed by a geometric change in either ventricles that hampers precise ventricular volume assessment using conventional 2D echocardiography.1)2) There are many reports on the reproducibility of RT3DE in clinical application to adults population without a complex heart disease.3) It is known that current RT3DE has relatively a high intraobserver and interobserver variability.4) In pediatric cases with a complex CHD, additional time consuming effort is required for the assessment of detailed anatomical defect during navigation of intriguing small cardiac structures to acquire optimal planes for secondary 3D reconstruction.
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Jin-Hee Oh (2016) conducted an editorial in Congenital Heart Disease. Real-time 3D echocardiography vs. 2D echocardiography or angiocardiography was evaluated. Real-time 3D echocardiography provides valuable non-invasive volumetric assessment in congenital heart disease, though it currently remains secondary to conventional 2D echocardiography due to technical limitations.
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