Ventricular septal defect echocardiography

and Leida Perez, M.D.

Associate Editor-In-Chief: Keri Shafer, M.D. [mailto:kshafer@bidmc.harvard.edu], Priyamvada Singh, MBBS

Echocardiography along with Doppler color flow mapping act as an important diagnostic tool in identifying ventricular septal defect (VSD). The different types of VSD on Echocardiography have the following features-


 * Perimembranous VSD - septal dropout in areas of septal leaflet of tricuspid valve and below right border of aortic annulus.


 * Anterior malalignment- appears below the posterior semilunar valve


 * Subpulmonary VSD- Appear as ECHO dropout within outflow septum and extends to the pulmonary annulus.


 * Inlet AV septal- extends from fibrous annulus of tricuspid valve into the muscular septum


 * Muscular defect- can occur anywhere in the septum and could be small, large, single or multiple

ECHO also helps in calculating pulmonary and systemic flow from arterial velocity profile and cross-sectional area of great vessels.



Echocardiogram
Two dimensional echo(2D) can be used to visualize the defects, and with pulsed wave and color 	doppler the sensitivity is 90%. The velocity across the defect can be used to calculate the gradient, and calculate the RV and PA pressures.



Ventricular Septal Defect After Myocardial Infarction 1
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Ventricular Septal Defect After Myocardial Infarction 2
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For more info and images, see Echo in Ventricular Septal Defect