Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease echocardiography or ultrasound


 * Associate Editors-In-Chief:, Priyamvada Singh, MBBS [mailto:psingh@perfuse.org]

Overview
Echocardiography helps in a diagnosis of pulmoanry hypertension in the patients with COPD.

Echocardiography

 * Patients with COPD may develop pulmonary hypertension due to long standing disease and hypoxemia. The hypoxemia causes vascular remodeling eventually leading to right sided heart failure or cor pulmonale. Though the pulmonary hypertension is only mild to moderate in COPD patients but findings of pulmonary hypertension on echocardiogram warrant further work up.A confirmation of diagnosis with pulmonary hypertension should be confirmed by cardiac catheterization.