Acute Mortality in Hospitalized Patients Undergoing Echocardiography With and Without an Ultrasound Contrast Agent

Abstract

Approximately 0.4% of hospitalized patients die within 24 h of echocardiography. There is no increased mortality risk associated with Definity-enhanced examinations, despite evidence for higher clinical acuity and more comorbid conditions in patients undergoing contrast studies.

Rapid Detection of Coronary Artery Stenoses With Real-Time Perfusion Echocardiography During Regadenoson Stress

“…2 Ultrasound contrast, on the other hand, has been shown to be safe in thousands of patients, without side effects and with only a very low risk (1 in 15 000) of an anaphylactoid reaction. [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] Although myocardial perfusion was more sensitive than wall motion for detection of CAD, wall motion analysis may also provide some additional information. The segments with induced wall motion abnormalities often persisted even into the 4-to-6 -minute period after the bolus, which indicates that stunning may have occurred, because perfusion at this stage was returning to normal.…”

Assessment of tissue perfusion by contrast-enhanced ultrasound

“…Adverse reactions in humans are rare, usually transient, and of mild intensity [13,14]. Hypotensive reactions have been observed after microbubble injection, and some deaths have been reported in cardiac patients [15][16][17][18].…”

Untitled

“…Life-threatening anaphylactic reactions in abdominal applications have been reported with a rate of 0.001 %, with no death in a series of > 23,000 abdominal patients [46]. Further studies have reproduced this very low adverse event rate [61,62]. Nonetheless, investigators should be trained in resuscitation and have the appropriate facilities available to react in cases of adverse events [4,38].…”