Usefulness of an accelerated transoesophageal stress echocardiography in severe obesity...

Evaluating patients who are awaiting gastric bypass surgery for underlying ischemic heart disease has been historically problematic.  The main issue of course is that many of these patients will have non-diagnostic or sub-optimal trans thoracic stress echocardiograms.  A recent paper which I will post proposes that this subset of patients instead undergo Dubutamine trans-esophageal stress echocardiograms.

"TE-DSE using an accelerated infusion protocol is a safe and well tolerated imaging technique for the evaluation of suspected myocardial ischemia and cardiac operative risk in severely obese patients awaiting bariatric surgery. Moreover, the absence of myocardial ischemia on TE-DSE correlates well with a low operative risk of cardiac event."

http://www.cardiovascularultrasound.com/content/8/1/30