Echocardiography in Adult Congenital Heart Disease

Congenital heart disease is gaining importance as a condition that effects not only the pediatric population but also the adult population, as many congenital cardiac conditions remain silent for years until accidentally discovered on routine check up. Echocardiography in Adult Congenital Heart Disease provides cardiologists with access to the wealth of imaging from the Royal Brompton Hospital and National Heart and Lung Institute in London to enable them to improve on their own skills and refine their imaging technique. The authors correlate this echocardiography experience with the pathological and surgical aspects of congenital heart defects.

Congenital heart disease is a multifaceted and complex subject due to the immense variability in morphology. Furthermore, cardiac anatomy and physiology continue to evolve years after the surgical repair of the original congenital anomaly. Some of these changes can be expected as part of the natural history of the disease and others are directly related to surgery. In view of this it has become clear to clinicians that adult congenital cardiology is a defined entity on its own, hence should be considered as a subspeciality. Cardiologists and cardiac radiologists must be prepared for a huge variability in the echocardiographic appearances of congenital heart disease and this book provides the necessary tools to evaluate the potential malformed paediatric or adult heart.

This book is designed to provide the cardiologist access to the considerable wealth of imaging data from Royal Brompton Hospital and National Heart & Lung Institute in London. This center, one of the most respected in Europe, has experience of a wide range of congenital heart diseases both in their diagnosis and management. The authors include a review of the pathologic, physiologic and surgical observations of different congenital diseases to assist in understanding the various echocardiographic presentations. The book contains large numbers of echocardiographic images to illustrate the appearances of often rare defects and demonstrates the use of Doppler echocardiography in assessing abnormal cardiac morphology and physiology.