Dr Sergio Bevilacqua, Dr Eleonora de Villa and Dr Peiman Nazerian

BACKGROUND:

Emergency physicians frequently employ transthoracic focused cardiac ultrasound to assist in diagnosis, therapy, and prognosis during cardiac arrest and peri-arrest, but the acquisition of adequate images can be suboptimal in critically ill patients; these limitations could be overcome thanks to a “privileged” window, using transesophageal echocardiography

COURSE ORGANISATION:  

Lectures: TEE principles; demonstration of basic two-dimensional echocardiographic images obtained from the different views; identification of normal anatomy and pathologic findings of different video loops

Training: 4 days in cardiac surgery operating rooms. The tutor (a cardiothoracic anesthesiologist) will guide the participants to the acquisition of manual and interpretative skills through the execution of >10 supervised studies

After the 4 days training: exam for skills assessment (probe insertion, images acquisition and interpretation) by the tutor

After 6 and 12 weeks : refresh training and re-evaluation of skills maintenance by the tutor