Experiences of Transesophageal echocardiography in Open Heart Surgery

Moon, Hyun Soo; Seo, Jeong Moo; Kim, Mi Woon; Sung, Sea Wook

Abstract

Echocardiography has been the most widely applicable noninvasive cardiovascular imaging technique. Recent advances in this technique have extended its use into the operating room by development of transesophageal approach. Many anesthesiologists use transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) because it provides a more direct and rapid method of assessing cardiac anatomy and function. Intraoperative TEE done by anesthesiologists or cardiologists makes it possible for operation team to get useful informations such as cardiac filling, valvular function, cardiac contractility, intracardiac shunt, segmental wall motion abnormality and adequacy of coronary blood flow, etc. We analyzed our clinical experiences of forty six cases of TEE (6.0%) in 767 cases of anesthesia for open heart surgery at the Sejong General Hospital during the period from September 1993 to August 1994. 767 open heart surgical cases were divided into 4 groups by disease entity ; 498 cases of group I(congenital), 190 cases of group II(valvular), 63 cases of group III(ischemic) and 16 cases of group IV(miscellaneous). TEE was done for 22 cases of male patients and 24 cases of female patients. 32 cases of TEE were done for the age group between 21 to 30 years old. The number of TEE was 26 cases of group II, 11 cases of group I, 7 cases of group III and 2 cases of group IV, respectively. The main purpose of TEE in descending order was 27 cases for assessment of cardiac contractility, 18 cases for valvular function after valvuloplasty, 7 cases for the evaluation of low cardiac output syndrome(LCOS), and 7 cases for adequacy of coronary blood flow respectively. Two cases of Biopump in group I, 2 cases of Biopump in group II, 3 cases of intraaortic baloon pump(IABP) in group II, III and IV were applied after TEE. Two cases of mitral valvular replacement(MVR) were done immediately after confirmation of valvular insufficiency by TEE. These results have demonstrated that TEE is one of the useful monitoring devices for the anesthesia in open heart surgery by assessment of variable informations about patients' cardiac status.