Echocardiography is learned at the machine, not in a chair. What a book can do is shorten the interval between seeing something and knowing what it means — and make sure that when you do measure, you measure the thing that changes management. That is what this title is built around.
Who it is written for
Trainees beginning transthoracic scanning who need the acquisition sequence and the normal ranges together. General physicians and intensivists who report focused studies and need to know exactly where their competence ends. Cardiology fellows preparing for an examination in which measurement thresholds are reliably tested. And practising clinicians who want a fast, dependable check on a number rather than a chapter on the physics behind it.
What it covers
- Acquisition, view by view. Parasternal long and short axis, apical four, five, two and three chamber, subcostal and suprasternal — with the probe adjustment that corrects each of the common off-axis errors.
- Chamber quantification. Linear dimensions, volumes by Simpson’s biplane method, wall thickness and mass, with the sex-specific normal ranges rather than a single averaged figure.
- Systolic function. Ejection fraction, fractional shortening, stroke volume by the LVOT method, and global longitudinal strain — including why strain falls before ejection fraction does.
- Diastolic function. The four-variable algorithm applied step by step, with explicit guidance on the indeterminate result, which is common and should be reported as indeterminate rather than resolved by preference.
- Valve assessment. Severity thresholds for stenosis and regurgitation at each valve, the continuity equation, the dimensionless index, and the discordant patterns that need a second look.
- The right heart. TAPSE, S′, fractional area change, inferior caval assessment and pulmonary pressure estimation.
- Focused emergency echocardiography. Tamponade, right ventricular strain, regional wall motion abnormality and gross ventricular impairment — the four questions worth answering at the bedside in an unstable patient.
How it is organised
By the question being asked rather than by anatomy. A clinician standing at a machine wants to know whether this ventricle is impaired, whether this valve is severe, whether this pericardial effusion matters — not to work through a chapter and assemble the answer. Tables are laid out to be read on a phone at the bedside, and every threshold carries its caveat next to it rather than in a footnote several pages away.
Using it properly
Read the acquisition section before your next list and apply one correction at a time; trying to fix five habits at once fixes none. Keep the normal ranges open while reporting until you no longer need them. And treat every discordant result as a prompt to re-measure rather than to choose the more convenient number — an off-axis measurement is not a borderline result, it is a wrong one.
Related material
The full reference chart of normal values is free to read in the echocardiography normal values article. Valve area, stroke volume and cardiac output can be worked out with the Academy calculators. The title itself and the rest of the imaging series are in the diagnosis and imaging reading list, and taught with supervised practice in the echocardiography module of the course programme.