Spot Diagnosis Using Pulse Wave Doppler Interrogation of the Abdominal Aorta

The abdominal aorta is easy to interrogate by transthoracic echocardiography in the majority of ambulatory patients and its interrogation is often part of the complete transthoracic study. Here we demonstrate four different findings on pulsed wave Doppler interrogation of the abdominal aorta. The pulsed wave signals were obtained from the subcostal longitudinal plane at the level of the diaphragm. The first case (Fig. 1A) is that of a 30-year-old male a normal heart and a normal Doppler recording of the abdominal aorta. There is a brisk systolic upstroke and rapid return to baseline at the end of syspISSN 1975-4612/ eISSN 2005-9655 Copyright © 2012 Korean Society of Echocardiography www.kse-jcu.org http://dx.doi.org/10.4250/jcu.2012.20.2.112