Transesophageal Echocardiography

Despite the progress made in the field of ultrasound, the echocardiographic examination is still of a relatively poor quality in a number of patients. This is basically due to obstacles from the thorax and the lung which very often impede the ultrasound beam transmission. Many of these technical limitations can now be overcome with the advent of transesophageal approach. Transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) is particularly useful when the transthoracic study is not diagnostic, when there is clinico-echocardiographic discordance, in patients with suspected endocarditis and valve dysfunction, in patients with prosthetic valves, particularly mitral valve prosthesis, in patients presenting with systemic thromboemboli, in patients with disease of the aorta, in patients with mitral regurgitation needing to define the cause particularly when surgery is contemplated, and during cardiac or non-cardiac surgery. In this brief overview the clinical applications of TEE are discussed