Echo societies update quantification standards

The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) and the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) have joined together again to update recommendations on the quantification of cardiac chamber size and function, publishing the document in the January issue of the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography.

In 2005, ASE and EACVI jointly published the earlier set of recommendations for echocardiographic chamber quantification, though advances in technology and practice, such as real-time 3D echo and myocardial deformation imaging, led them to revise some points in this year’s update.

Compared with previous guidelines, the new document’s recommendations are based on larger numbers of normal subjects from multiple databases, which improves the reliability of the reference values, according to a statement from ASE.

“There is a clear understanding in our field that echocardiography needs to be quantified in a uniform manner around the world,” said Roberto M. Lang, MD, the director of Noninvasive Cardiac Imaging Laboratories at University of Chicago Medicine and co-chair of the recommendation writing group. “Before this update, there were some minor discrepancies among previously published guidelines. But now that we have new normal 2D and 3D values for size and function for all four chambers of the heart, jointly derived by the European and American echocardiographic societies, this will allow echoes to be interpreted uniformly across the globe, from my homeland in Argentina to my peers at the University of Chicago, and our colleagues in Europe, Asia, Africa, and beyond.”

The full guideline document can be accessed at www.asecho.org/guidelines.