Focused echocardiography

Background. Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is carried out according to expanded protocol. Besides that, focused echocardiography (FOCUS) used is an addition to the physical assessment of cardiac activity in searching for signs or confirming potential diagnosis in specific clinical context. Portable and hand-held imaging devices are used frequently for this aim. FOCUS has not been studied enough in the conditions of domestic health care. Therefore, an objective analysis of the world experience of this method is relevant.

Aim: to study the efficiency of FOCUS application using hand-held imaging devices in cardiological practice.

Materials and methods. Forty six scientific Englishlanguage publications were analyzed. Text and bibliography are available in the PubMed search system for 2010–2018 years. The use of FOCUS was subjected to critical analysis accordingly to various application fields.

Results. A lot of left ventricle structures and functions can be assessed by FOCUS without resorting to TTE or use it for verification later. The method has high diagnostic efficacy in myocardial contractility assessing in patients with acute coronary syndrome. Timely definition of right ventricle size and function might be crucial for clinical suspicion of pulmonary embolism. FOCUS should be used as screening diagnostic method for early detection of valve lesions in rheumatic heart disease.

Conclusion. FOCUS is highly informative for various cardiac pathology. It is easy to train in a short time. FOCUS results correlate well with TTE results.

focused echocardiography, limited echocardiography, physical assessment, hand-held device, directed cardiac ultrasound

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