This book teaches the key knowledge required for the use of ultrasound to guide many catheter based cardiac therapies. While live CME courses are now covering this material there are very few textbooks on this topic. A unique aspect of this book is that it has many images to illustrate the teaching points. The use of minimally invasive treatments of many cardiac diseases especially by catheter based therapies and devices is a rapidly expanding discipline in cardiology and radiology. Cardiac ultrasound particularly echocardiography is utilized extensively to guide these therapies. Many echocardiographers are being called upon to guide these therapies but they have not been trained in this unique use of echocardiography.
Michael H. Picard, MD, FACC, FASE, FAHA is the Director of the Echocardiography at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is a Past-President of the American Society of Echocardiography. His recent volunteer service includes membership on the committees that developed the ACC Appropriateness Criteria for Transthoracic and Transesophageal Echocardiography, the ACC Appropriateness Criteria for Multimodality Cardiac Imaging in Heart Failure, the revised WHO diagnostic criteria for Arrhythmogenic RV Dysplasia and the ASE Quality Standards for Laboratory Operations. His awards include the Young Investigator Award from the American College of Cardiology, the Richard Popp Award for Excellence in Teaching from the American Society of Echocardiography, the Inge Edler Lectureship from the American Society of Echocardiography and the Greene Lectureship from Vanderbilt University Schoolof Medicine. His research interests include the applications of echocardiography in coronary artery disease, translational cardiology and valvular heart disease. As the director of echocardiography of the MGH he developed the interventional echocardiography service that integrated the use of echocardiography in the catheterization and electrophysiology laboratories to assist in many catheter based treatments. This service was among the first of its kind. Jonathan Passeri, MD is the Director of Interventional Echocardiography at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His early work helped demonstrate the value of 3D transesophageal echocardiography in the catheter based closure of atrial septal defects.
Jacob P. Dal-Bianco, MD, FACC, FASE is a cardiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital with a clinical expertise in heart valve disease and special interest in mitral valve disease. His research is focused on the mitral valve and his work has been recognized by a Career Development Award from the American Society of Echocardiography, and by his selection for Young Investigator Award presentations of the American Heart Association and American Society of Echocardiography. He is an expert in advanced cardiac ultrasound techniques to guide transcatheter repair / replacement of the mitral and aortic valve.
