Presently, there are no well-defined standards for documentation of echocar
diographic studies. Nevertheless, standards are essential to provide compar
ability of data and to realize electronic communication, both essential for
quality management in echocardiography.
Therefore, the working group" Standards and LV function" of the German Soci
ety of Cardiology developed a consensus for documentation of echocardiograp
hic studies. In the present gaper this consensus is presented and illustrat
ed by typical clinical examples. Additionally, a prototype of a user-orient
ed software based on this data set is presented. The complete data set for
transesophageal and transthoracic echocardiography and the software prototy
pe can be downloaded at http://echo.ma.uni-heidelberg.de.