Echocardiography Evaluation of Ischemic Heart Disease

Over the last decades, echocardiography has progressively become an irreplaceable diagnostic technique for the assessment of patients with IHD. Echocardiography applied in conjunction with exercise or pharmacologic stress is used for the detection of inducible myocardial ischemia, and it is an essential supporting tool for clinicians in the evaluation, risk stratification, and follow-up of patients with IHD. Moreover, it is applied in the acute setting for the management of patients with AMI. Various new ultrasound techniques have been established in the last several years, including contrast echocardiography, three-dimensional echocardiography, and speckle tracking echocardiography, which advantages in IHD evaluation are extensively recognized. In this chapter, the authors will describe the use of standard and new echocardiographic techniques in the diagnosis and prognosis of IHD either in the chronic or in the acute settings.