Echocardiography in Congenital Heart Disease Made Simple

Book excerpt: Congenital malformations of the heart are often dismissed as a form of complex heart disease, which is too difficult to understand, and is best referred to the specialists. The authors of this handbook, however, aim to dispel this myth. The advent of cross-sectional and, more recently, three-dimensional echocardiography, enables the structural malformations to be visualised virtually non-invasively. Without a thorough understanding of the arrangement of cardiac structures, interpretation of these images can be very frustrating, not to mention having to cope with difficult terminology. Contrary to popular belief, however, the reader does not require a knowledge of cardiac embryology in order to understand the morphology of a malformed heart. This book takes the reader through the subject in a straightforward fashion, beginning with recognition of the normal cardiac chambers, progressing through the process of analysing the layout of the chambers in a sequential way, and then dealing with the more common cardiac defects in turn. Each chapter deals with the anatomical arrangement illustrated with diagrams and complemented with echocardiographic images of the most important cross-sections. The text is succinct, and is accompanied by numerous diagrams and cross-sectional echocardiographic images of the highest quality. The most common defects are described chapter by chapter, emphasising the salient anatomical features.