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Summary: An Essential Reference for Doppler Tissue Imaging
Review: Doppler Tissue Imaging Echocardiography is the first book reviewing this relatively new echocardiographic technique. The importance of direct, on-line quantification of myocardial wall movement as an echocardiographic tool is not to be underestimated. Dr Garcia-Fernandez and his co-authors have managed to produce a text which describes the early development of Doppler tissue imaging (DTI), its current applications and future possibilities as a diagnostic method. The authors clearly describe the normal patterns seen with both colour DTI and pulsed wave DTI and correlate these findings with established echocardiographic teshniques, such as transmitral Doppler blood flow. Later chapters elucidate the changes in these normal patterns when pathology occurs in the myocardial tissue, including ischaemic heart disease, diastolic dysfunction, hypertensive heart disease, the cardiomyopathies, conduction disorders and cardiac transplantation. The scientific and mathematical basis, along with the technical limitations of DTI, are discussed. Possible methods in the future for overcoming these limitations are mentioned. The major criticism of this text is that the English is relatively poor, and it would have taken little effort on the publisher's part to have provided some help for the Spanish authors to produce a book which is smooth to read not only technically, but also grammatically and syntactically. Any English or American cardiologist, I'm sure, would have been happy to provide this service. Although DTI has not found its way, as yet, into the mainstream of cardiological investigations, its non-invasive nature and ability to provide on-line results, gives it huge potential to move from a primarily research technique to one of the more useful tools in a cardiologist's armoury. Dr Garcia-Fernandez's book helps to make this a possibility. Dr J Glover Feb 2000
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