Echocardiography has become an essential technology and is utilized by the majority of pediatric cardiologists. It serves as an indispensible tool in the diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart disease. It involves mastering a complex skill set made up of two key components: procedural echocardiography and interpretive echocardiography. The goal of this website is to provide a background in interpretive echocardiography in the setting of basic and complex congenital heart disease.
Congenital heart disease is a spectrum of disease from a small hole in the heart to a very complex congenital lesion. Training physicians and sonographers in echocardiograpy is a challenge. Cardiologists are expected to not only master a procedural skill, but they are also faced with the challenging task of interpreting those images. Because some types of CHD are quite rare, it is often difficult for trainees in smaller institutions to get exposed to these more rare variants.
Educational Objectives
- To provide comprehensive training in interpretive echocardiography
- To expose trainees to all variants of congenital heart disease and their subtypes
- To provide a better understanding of normal echocardiographic anatomy
- To allow an interactive approach to reviewing and identifying echocardiographic examples of normal anatomy and congenital heart disease.
- To ultimately allow for better identification of cardiac pathology in the clinical setting
Target Audience
This website provides a comprehensive echo imaging database of fetal and transthoracic echocardiography. In addition, introductory learning modules are offered to pediatric sonographers, residents, and cardiology fellows to provide a better understanding of the broad spectrum of congenital heart disease.
Website Course Director
- Josh Kailin, MD
- Pediatric Cardiologist
- Assistant Professor
- Texas Children’s Hospital
Contributors
Center for Collaborative and Interactive Technologies (CCIT) team through Baylor College of Medicine (Anne Perch, Doug Alexander, Tony Adams, Michael Fordis, Kevin Musgrave, and Jason King).
A special thank you to the entire pediatric cardiology department at Texas Children’s Hospital for your support and guidance.
Funding Acknowledgement
This website was made possible through an educational grant provided by Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Research Innovation and Scholarship in Medical Education. We would also like to acknowledge and express our sincere gratitude to the entire CCIT team for assisting in its development.
The use of this website and its learning modules provides trainees with a better understanding of the anatomy and physiology of congenital heart disease and an improved recognition and interpretation of all CHD lesions.
— Josh Kailin, MD
This website was created by Dr. Josh Kailin. Dr. Kailin is a faculty member and assistant professor of pediatrics at the Baylor College of Medicine. He is a pediatric cardiologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas. His area of expertise is in non-invasive imaging.
Dr. Kailin performed a pediatric cardiology fellowship at Denver Children’s Hospital and spent an additional year of training in non-invasive imaging at the Sibley Heart Center at Emory University.