Guillem Pons-Lladó
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Title: Non-Invasive Cardiac Imaging: the challenge of resource management for an efficient diagnostic workup in the era of new emerging techniques
Biography
Biography: Guillem Pons-Lladó
Abstract
Cardiac Imaging Units (CIUs) encompass today conventional techniques, such as Echocardiography (ECHO), together with other recently appeared methods with proven advantages for cardiac applications, as Magnetic Resonance (CMR) or Multidetector Computed Tomography (CCT). ECHO is an omnipresent technique in the vast majority of patients due to its availability, low cost, and the large amount of useful information that provides. The actual value of ECHO, however, is largely dependent on the skill of the operator (cardiologist and technologist) and, also, limited by physical constraints of ultrasound, as the reduced field of view, or interferences due to non-cardiac structures. CMR, appeared later in time, does not face with these limitations and, in addition, provides with new important information, as is that on the tissue components of heart muscle. Finally, CCT, the most recently introduced technique, has made available a true non-invasive coronary angiography, which is the optimal complement to the other techniques. ECHO, CMR and CCT constitute, thus, indispensable resources in a modern CIU upon which rational diagnostic schemes may be based, allowing to achieve the ideal threefold aim in every patient with heart disease: 1) diagnostic accuracy; 2 ) prognostic stratification; and 3) therapeutic planning. The diverse nature of these techniques, however, and their different adscription pose a particular challenge of organization to the CIU, which requires the involvement of committed cardiologists, radiologists, and nurses/technologists, who must be specifically trained on this truly new subspecialty in Cardiology/Radiology as is Cardiac Imaging.