Echocardiography in pericardial disease.

Since its introduction into clinical cardiology in the 1960's, echocardiography has become an essential and integral part of the evaluation of the cardiac patient. Dr. Harvey Feigenbaum had a seminal role in popularizing echocardiography. Detection of pericardial effusion was one of the first applications of echocardiography to gain widespread acceptance. Over the past 40 years, echocardiography has become a ubiquitous, first line tool for evaluating the pericardium and other cardiac structures.