Echocardiography Program
The Clinical Echocardiography Program, part of the interdisciplinary Heart Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, is a comprehensive, academic program that excels in ultrasound imaging using all available modalities, including transthoracic, transesophageal, fetal, stress and intravascular studies.
Over 7,000 studies are performed each year at Cincinnati Children's Echocardiography Lab which is staffed by three attending cardiologists specializing in echocardiography, and by five sonographers.
Transthoracic echocardiograms are harmless and painless, and at Cincinnati Children's are performed in a four exam room suite with television and videotapes in each room for the patients' entertainment. There are two nurses in the echo lab to care for infants and toddlers needing sedation to remain still for the examination.
Transesophageal echocardiograms are performed by the echocardiography attending physicians and are primarily used to immediately evaluate the results of heart surgery in the operating room.
A comprehensive fetal echocardiography program provides detailed information on a baby's heart before birth and counseling to the parents.
The stress echocardiography program involves performing echocardiography during stress (usually exercise) providing an assessment of the function of the heart and its valves during the more typically active state of children.
