How to proceed: Echocardiography can be distracting to the trainee in cardiac anesthesia; however, its mastery is essential for the practice of cardiac anesthesia and it has great utility in patients undergoing noncardiac surgery in situations of hemodynamic instability. It is not the intention of the authors to present a detailed review or text of perioperative echocardiography—there are countless such works available. Rather, as cardiac anesthesia principles are introduced, TEE imagery and techniques will be employed much as in current practice where TEE informs and influences anesthesia decision making throughout the conduct of cardiac anesthesia.
To start, it is important to review the standard images of the heart. Figure Intro–6 labels the standard views of the heart obtained during TEE examination.
Once having appreciated the structures that can be seen based upon the schematic from Figure Intro–6, the image and Video atlas (Figures A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9, A10, A11, A12, A13, A14, A15, A16, A17, and A18, Videos A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6,A7, A8, A9, A10, A11, A12, A13, A14, A16, A17) will further provide orientation as to how the three-dimensional heart can be visualized by two-dimensional TEE.