The echocardiography laboratory in the informatic era

This article overviews the latest progress in echocardiography in this info rmatic era. We will present new, different techniques available in clinical settings for qualitative and quantitative evaluation of global and regiona l left ventricular function, showing their helpfulness in clinical work. We will also report our personal experiences with 3-dimensional (3-D) echocar diography in quantification of left ventricular total mass and left- ventri cular dysfunctional mass, and in evaluation of left-ventricular parietal st ress. Finally, we will show how the organization of a modern echocardiograp hy laboratory is changing after informatic progress: we will report our per sonal experiences about transmission of echocardiography data between 2 wor k stations, located in different places; in this way we can realize an info rmatic web, which can go out from the single echocardiography laboratories and move toward intradepartment and interdepartment services. (C) 2000 by E xcerpta Medica, Inc.