Echocardiography plays a key role in the diagnosis of many cardiac conditions and in the assessment of response to therapies. Despite the emergence of new, advanced diagnostic tools such as cardiac computer tomography and cardiac magnetic resonance, echocardiography still plays an important role in patient care because of its unique capabilities.

The advantages of echocardiography are that it is a safe non-invasive test without radiation exposure and is a relatively inexpensive method to rapidly evaluate the structure and functions of heart.

The most frequent heart pathology diagnosed by echocardiography:

• advanced coronary artery disease;
• valvular heart disease;
• enlarged heart with reduced pump function;
• pericardial diseases;
• congenital heart disease.

New uses for echocardiography include :

• providing point-of-care cardiac imaging with miniaturised transthoracic echocardiographic devices;
• three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography for assessment of valve disease prior to surgical and transcatheter repair;
• two-dimensional and three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography for guiding catheter-based interventions;
• playing a key role in personalised genetic medicine;
• monitoring cardiac side effects in patients undergoing chemotherapy for cancer;
• providing perfusion imaging;
• helping in the early detection of subclinical disease.