VH Dissector: Heart Ultrasound

The use of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) of the heart is becoming much more common in emergent situations - e.g. patients with undifferentiated shock, hypotension, chest pain or dyspnea. This has led to the development of the focused cardiac ultrasound (FOCUS).

The acoustic windows used in FOCUS are the parasternal long axis (PSLA), parasternal short axis (PSSA), apical 4-chamber (A4C), and subxiphoid (SX).

First view this quick overview of the 4 basic views of the heart used in FOCUS:

From: https://nephropocus.com/2019/06/14/focus-on-focus-the-4-basic-views-of-the-heart/

2. Next, view the videos below showing each of these views in a normal heart. A slightly longer narrated version is also available by clicking the link under each video.

Parasternal Long Axis

Link to Narrated Version

Parasternal Short Axis

Link to Narrated Version

Sub-Xiphoid

Link to Narrated Version

Apical 4-Chamber

Link to Narrated Version

From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8741534/

3. Finally, you can review the anatomy you would see in the 'apical four-chamber view' using this bookmark from the VH Dissector along side a labeled view of an apical 4-chamber ultrasound.

VH Dissector View

Apical Four chamber view on Transthoracic echocardiography. Figure by Ghufran Adnan. From: Ultrasound Adult Echocardiography Assessment, Protocols, and Interpretation. Copyright © 2023, StatPearls Publishing LLC. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credits:

VH Dissector prosection bookmark created by Toltech, Inc. Videos from https://coreultrasound.com/. Additional images referenced above.

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