Zusammenfassung
Die Beurteilung der kardialen Funktion kritisch kranker Patienten ist eine wichtige
diagnostische Maßnahme auf Intensivstationen. Jedoch kann die meist angewandte detaillierte
echokardiografische Untersuchung gerade Ungeübte rasch an ihre Grenzen bringen. Zusätzliche
Informationen vermag die myokardiale Deformationsanalyse mittels Speckle-Tracking-Echokardiografie
zu liefern – ein innovatives Verfahren, das in diesem Beitrag vorgestellt wird.
Abstract
The noninvasive evaluation of cardiac morphology and function by echocardiography
is an essential part of modern intensive care therapy. However, this procedure can
be challenging and beginners often lack the ability to objectively state the correct
global and regional myocardial function. Recent developments allow a semi-automatic
deformation (strain) analysis by a couple of more objective respective parametric
techniques. Strain describes the change in length of a myocardial segment during the
cardiac cycle. While this is primarily a regional analysis, an insight into the global
left ventricular deformation is possible by averaging all relevant segments. Speckle
tracking echocardiography (STE) is actually the only clinically relevant technique
and is well scientifically and clinically approved. The advantages of STE are the
angle-independency, the ease and fastness of its use, the availability at the bedside
and low costs. Through proven good reproducibility it should be a good method for
repeated analysis even by different echocardiographers. However, actually the greatest
disadvantage is the variation of measures between different vendors of ultrasound
machines and software-packages. At the moment, a task force of leading echocardiography
experts and industry personal is working on a solution. Normal values have been published
for healthy collectives and STE has been in use in the majority of cardiac diseases.
Besides from a few research studies, the usage in critically ill patients actually
is still limited.
Schlüsselwörter
Speckle-Tracking-Echokardiografie - Deformationsanalyse - kritisch krank - Intensivstation
Key words
speckle tracking echocardiography - deformation analysis - critical ill - intensive
care unit