Arch Dis Child 1998;78:401-402 ( May )

Annotation

Echocardiography on the neonatal unit: a job for the neonatologist or the cardiologist?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

	Introduction

Over recent years echocardiography has changed from a purely research tool to an essential part of adequate management of the critically ill newborn. In the hypotensive or shocked infant, there is no better way to find a treatable underlying cause of their circulatory failure such as myocardial dysfunction, a large ductal shunt, pericardial effusion, or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in infants of mothers with diabetes. A large ductal shunt sufficient to cause severe reduction in effective cardiac output and even cardiorespiratory collapse after extubation can be clinically silent and may only be revealed by echocardiography.¹ Similarly, septic vegetations or thrombi on valves or central lines can only be seen this way, and it is feasible to assess pulmonary arterial pressure non-invasively in most ill newborns.

Therefore, someone needs to be available 24 hours a day in all neonatal units to do echocardiography. There are about 60 paediatric cardiologists in the UK, about one per . . . [Full text of this article]

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