New Echo Methods Show Heart Muscle Changes

The study was presented at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in Berlin (Germany).

TDE measures velocities in the heart muscle, while SDE measures regional contractions in the heart muscle. Thus, the two methods detect the function of the heart muscle in two different ways. In the study, researchers compared the ability of these methods to detect changes in the function of the heart muscle during different degrees of reduction in the blood supply. When the blood supply was cut off, both methods were able to identify local dysfunction in the heart muscle.

When the blood supply was only reduced but not abolished, there were minor and less-characteristic changes noted by TDE, while SDE clearly distinguished regions with reduced blood supply. The researchers, from the Rikshospitalet University Hospital (Oslo, Norway) concluded that SDE appears to be the most sensitive of the two methods.




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