Transthoracic echocardiography may be useful for preoperative cardiac evaluation of gynaecological patients undergoing routine surgery.

Echocardiography has been an integral noninvasive tool for [preoperative] cardiac evaluation that provides with echocardiographic details which may also be useful to perioperative clinicians to tailor their anesthetic deliberation while dealing with preoperative patients. The objective of this study is preoperative evaluation of routine gynecological patients echocardiographically after being referred from respective internists or anesthesiologists. This was a prospective, nonrandomized study of elective 68 cases who underwent echocardiographic evaluation preoperatively from 15th July 2009 to 14th July 2012. The mean age of the patients was 52.1 +/- 10.3 years with the age range of 30-79 years. Valvular heart disease was the most common echocardiographic finding (129.4%) followed by left ventricular diastolic dysfunction, LVDD (48.5%) and left ventricular hypertrophy (22.1%). Systolic dysfunction was detected in 2.9% of patients and pulmonary arterial hypertension in 2.9% patients. Amongst patients referred after preoperative anaesthetic evaluation, patients had different cardiac lesions echocardiographically. Preoperative echocardiographic evaluation may provide important cardiac informations and values which might be employed by perioperative physicians to tailor their treatment.