Understanding cardiac "echo" reports. Practical guide for referring physicians.

OBJECTIVE To help referring physicians extract clinically useful information from transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) reports, highlighting current practice and innovations that are reflected with increasing frequency in reports issued by echocardiac laboratories.

QUALITY OF EVIDENCE Echocardiography is an established science. The field has a large body of literature, including peer-reviewed articles and textbooks describing the physics, techniques, and clinical applications of TTE.

MAIN MESSAGE Transthoracic echocardiography is a basic tool for diagnosis and follow-up of heart disease. Items of interest in TTE reports can be categorized. In clinical practice, TTE results are best interpreted with a view to underlying cardiac physiology and patients' clinical status. Knowing the inherent limitations of TTE will help referring physicians to interpret results and to avoid misdiagnoses based on false assumptions about the procedure.

CONCLUSION A structured approach to reading TTE reports can assist physicians in extracting clinically useful information from them, while avoiding common pitfalls.