Real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography for prosthetic valve endocarditis: initial experience.

Real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography is a relatively new technology with rapidly growing potential applications. Prosthetic valve endocarditis is still a challenging diagnosis despite improvements in image qualities obtained by both transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiograms. The purpose of this article is to present 4 cases of suggested prosthetic valve endocarditis, in which real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography was performed, and to discuss the potential use of real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography for this application.