INTRAOPERATIVE TRANSOSEPHAGEAL ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY IN VALVE REPLACEMENT SURGERY: OUR EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Transosephageal echocardiography (TEE) is applied widely during heart valve replacement surgery (1). The first successful demonstration of the use of the esophageal window for echocardiography was reported in 1976 (2). The esophageal echocardiography has provided an airless pathway especially in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which yield interpretable echocardiographic windows and concluded as a safe diagnostic procedure (2). Transosephageal echocardiography (TEE) showed a huge improvement that, it became one of the essential diagnostic procedures for the valvular disease and valvular surgery (3-8). It has become the standard of care for evaluating the reparative or curative replacement valvular surgical procedures, thus providing an immediate gauge of the surgical results and helping to avoid suboptimal surgical results (8). From that time starting with the cardiology specialists, today TEE is performed perioperatively either cardiology or anesthesiology specialists or both of them according to the guidelines (9-12). Our aim is to report our TEE guided perioperative valvular surgical results in the light of the literature.