Key result
Echocardiography guides risk stratification and surgical timing in valvular heart disease.
Why the study?
Echocardiography is widely used for evaluating valvular heart disease and provides important prognostic information, but a comprehensive summary of outcomes data is needed.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Supports echocardiography for valvular risk stratification; leaves open prospective validation of specific thresholds for intervention timing.
Echocardiography is comparatively inexpensive relative to other modern cardiovascular imaging tools. It is widely available, even in poor countries, and provides a comprehensive evaluation of cardiac structure and function. It is an ideal tool for the evaluation of patients with valvular heart disease and provides important prognostic information. This review of recent literature highlights reports on outcomes data and provides a clinically valuable summary in table format.
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Unger et al. (2009) conducted a review in Valvular heart disease. Echocardiography was evaluated.
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