A precise evaluation of pulmonary pressure is of fundamental importance for the diagnosis and management of patients with hypertension of the pulmonary artery (PH). Dopper echodopplercardiography is a low cost, non-invasive method in widespread use for anatomical and functional assessment of the right cardiac chambers and estimation of pulmonary pressures, demonstrating a good correlation with the hemodynamic data obtained by cardiac catheterization. Although the most adequate and widely used technique for determination of pulmonary pressure is measurement of the gradient between right ventricle and right atrium through tricuspid regurgitation, it can also be performed by analysis of pulmonary regurgitation or systolic pulmonary flow. Transesophageal echocardiography is a very useful procedure when acoustic window is limited by transthoracic approach and allows for high quality imaging of cardiac structures and detection of some disorders related to PH. The role of echocardiography is already established in the literature for the diagnosis of PH, as well as for therapeutic and prognostic evaluation. In patients with pulmonary thromboembolism, detection of right ventricular dysfunction by echocardiography is an important input for adoption of thrombolytic therapy. Furthermore, this method is already customary in monitoring the therapeutic response in patients with primary in the assessment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and in the follow up of patients submitted to pulmonary transplantation.
Echocardiography, Doppler; Pulmonary Hypertension
