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Echo-enhancing agents: safety

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Advances in Echo Imaging Using Contrast Enhancement

Abstract

The enhanced echocontrast associated with the gas microbubbles produced when a liquid is rapidly injected into a large blood vessel was first reported by Gramiak and Shah in 1968 [1]. Twenty-eight years later, microbubbles remain the standard echocontrast enhancers. They have been used clinically to verify the presence of intracardiac shunts [2] and valvular regurgitation [3, 4] and for the measurement of cardiac output [5]. Contrast echocardiography (CE) has also been used as a means of defining myocardial perfusion non-invasively [6]. In recent times this rapidly developing diagnostic technique has been more accurately named myocardial contrast two-dimensional echocardiography (MC-2DE). Contrast enhancers have extended the applications of cardiac color Doppler imaging, and gas bubbles have also found applications outside the cardiovascular system, in establishing tubal patency during investigations of infertility and in the diagnostic evaluation of potential malignancies [7, 8]. In the early days of CE, clinical investigators speculated that the gaseous microbubbles present in the echocontrast agents (ECA) were probably the source of the observed contrast [6, 9]. This discovery was confirmed [10–13] and it is now accepted that the ultrasonic targets in contrast-enhanced ultrasonography are the microbubbles themselves.

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Authors
  1. Navin C. Nanda
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  2. Edwin L. Carstensen
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA

    Navin C. Nanda MD (Professor of Medicine and Director, Heart Station/Echocardiography Laboratories) (Professor of Medicine and Director, Heart Station/Echocardiography Laboratories)

  2. The Kirklin Clinic, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA

    Navin C. Nanda MD (Professor of Medicine and Director, Heart Station/Echocardiography Laboratories) (Professor of Medicine and Director, Heart Station/Echocardiography Laboratories)

  3. Clinical Development Diagnostics of Schering AG, Berlin, Germany

    Reinhard Schlief Dr Med Dipl Phys (Head of Magnetic Resonance and Ultrasound Contrast Media) (Head of Magnetic Resonance and Ultrasound Contrast Media)

  4. Department of Radiology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA

    Barry B. Goldberg MD (Professor of Radiology and Director) (Professor of Radiology and Director)

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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Nanda, N.C., Carstensen, E.L. (1997). Echo-enhancing agents: safety. In: Nanda, N.C., Schlief, R., Goldberg, B.B. (eds) Advances in Echo Imaging Using Contrast Enhancement. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5704-9_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5704-9_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-6405-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-5704-9

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