Talk:Echocardiography
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I'm against a merger of Echocardiology and Echocardiography:
- Echocardiography describes the art and science of excamining the heart by ultrasound. The article of echocardiology describes one of several professions who performs echocardiography.
- Echocardiology (shouldn't it be echocardiologist?) is a seldom used term. (Echocardiographic) sonographer or echo-tech (slightly condecending) is more common
- The article about echocardiology is valid only in the USA (and perhaps Canada?). An article about sonographers in diferent countries would be interesting though.
--Ekko 07:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
- I was examined six times this past week by echocardiographers (1 TEE and 5 TTE), while at St. Luke's Hospital in Houston. I have profound respect and admiration for those dedicated and skilled professionals. Thank you!
[edit] echocardiology
I practice non-invasive cardiology in the United States. I don't know a single MD who uses the term echocardiology in clinical practive. Is this a term used in other countries? Here we refer to it as echocardiography. Should we remove this title?
- Done. "Echocardiology" is now a redirect to Cardiac sonographer.--Ekko 21:22, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
In the US, physicians from a number of specialties perform echocardiographic procedures. The generic term echocardiographer refers to a physician who performs and interprets echocardiographic examinations. A sonographer performs the examination, but does not have a medical degree.
I'm only familiar with the procedure being referred to as "stress echo" or just "echo" - but either way the overall discipline should be defined as echocardiography - due to the topographical nature/component of the 2D visual assessment process... however, an argument could be made for "echocardiology" because a complex understanding and study of data acquired is necessary for diagnosis. If the topic of discussion is to define the proper nomenclature I think echocardiography is proper.
[edit] stress echocardiogram
I was considering making a redirect of "stress echocardiogram" to this page, but I thought doing so might delay the creation of such a page which might very well be a whole page to itself & I am surprised that there isn't already. Nagelfar (talk) 05:56, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

