Anomalies of the Right Ventricular Outflow Tract and Pulmonary Valve

Transthoracic Echocardiographic Evaluation of Pulmonary Valve Anomalies in Pediatric Patients

“…Quadricuspid pulmonary valve is another rare congenital heart disease that can cause pulmonary stenosis. Only 4% of quadricuspid pulmonary valves result in a clinically significant pathology; among these, 33% result in stenosis and 67% cause regurgitation . Quadricuspid pulmonary valves usually do not cause severe clinical complications, and their presence frequently remains clinically silent in childhood .…”

“…According to our experience in children, most cases can be displayed in the short‐axis view of the pulmonary valve, from which pulmonary leaflet number abnormalities and morphologic malformations can be distinguished. A cross‐sectional image of the pulmonary valve can be obtained by visualizing the short axis of the aortic valve and rotating the transducer clockwise 10° to 20° . In most children, bicuspid and quadricuspid pulmonary valve anomalies and congenital single pulmonary cusp absence can be discriminated from echocardiographic views.…”

“…Only 4% of quadricuspid pulmonary valves result in a clinically significant pathology; among these, 33% result in stenosis and 67% cause regurgitation. 5 Quadricuspid pulmonary valves usually do not cause severe clinical complications, and their presence frequently remains clinically silent in childhood. 6 On transthoracic echocardiography, the pulmonary valve is typically seen in its longitudinal axis, and short-axis cross-sectional views of the pulmonary valve leaflets are not generally obtained.…”

Anomalous right ventricular muscle bands obstructing a large apical muscular ventricular septal defect: From fetal to post‐natal three‐dimensional assessment

“…3 The embryologic mechanism proposed from Tal Geva to explain the development of fibromuscular obstruction in DCRV is a missing absorption of the pulmonary infundibulum. 4 But we now know from…”

Echocardiographic two-dimensional view of the pulmonary valve in infants: the high transsternal view

“…The pulmonary valve is usually easy to assess in a standard two-dimensional transthoracic echocardiography study; however, an approach that defines its cross-sectional morphology accurately is lacking. The short-axis view of the pulmonary valve would show a similar image to the one of the aortic valve from the parasternal short-axis view, but the particular anatomical position of the pulmonary valve in standard echocardiographic views makes this difficult to assess 1 . Although there are a few cases reported in the literature where right-sided heart disease results in modification of the anatomy of the right heart that allows a short-axis view of the pulmonary valve to be obtained from a parasternal window, 2 , 3 this situation is changing with the gradual introduction into our clinical practice of new imaging techniques such as three-dimensional echocardiography and cardiac MRI that are able to identify such anomalies of the pulmonary valve 4 …”