Sachkunde Interventionelle Echokardiographie

Abstract

Structural heart disease interventions have undergone an enormous development and many innovative approaches have become routinely performed procedures. Consequently, procedural standardization for the purpose of quality assurance is of increasing relevance. Interventional echocardiography plays a major role for the quality of structural heart procedures. At the same time, echocardiographic guiding can be extremely demanding for the echocardiographer and the understanding of the employed devices and procedural steps is an essential prerequisite. The present position paper summarizes these aspects with the goal of a standardized approach to interventional echocardiography. Its content will serve as the basis of future seminars by the German Cardiac Society. These courses will be mandatory to obtain the competence certificate for interventional echocardiography by the German Cardiac Society. Apart from the abovementioned aspects of quality assurance, the goal of the present initiative is to promote the perception of interventional echocardiography as a newly formed competence equivalent to the performance of interventional procedures.