Transthoracic echocardiography: The basic views

Abstract

Bedside transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is a valuable, noninvasive, point-of-care diagnostic tool that can be used for cardiac evaluation of symptomatic or hemodynamically unstable patients. Use of TTE in the perioperative setting, emergency medicine or critical care patient population can provide new objective data and guide clinical management. The increasing availability of TTE and minimal training required to become competent makes the bedside TTE examination complementary to TEE.