Health Dictionary
Reliable, easy-to-read patient information on common medical conditions — written in plain language, free of jargon, and grounded in current evidence. Browse the most frequent diagnoses, understand what they mean for everyday life, and learn which steps and questions help you have a focused conversation with your doctor.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease echocardiography or ultrasound
Introduction
Overview
Overview
Echocardiography helps in a diagnosis of pulmoanry hypertension in the patients with COPD.
Echocardiography
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.
Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]; Associate Editors-In-Chief: Cafer Zorkun, M.D., Ph.D. [2], Priyamvada Singh, MBBS [3]