Utility of echocardiography in the diagnosis of aortic dissection involving the ascending aorta.

We report our prospective experience with sensitivity, specificity, predictive values and efficiency of echocardiography in diagnosing AD involving the ascending aorta (type A). We studied two groups of patients with both echocardiography and aortography. Group 1 was made up by 46 consecutive patients with clinical suspicion of AD. Type A AD was confirmed in 23 cases. Group 2 was comprised of 509 adult patients who had been studied during the same period with both aortography and echocardiography (including 46 patients from group 1); prevalence of type A AD in this group was 4.9 percent. We conclude that the diagnostic usefulness of echocardiography in patients with suspected type A AD is limited by its moderate sensitivity and predictive positive value. Aortography remains the major step in diagnosis. Within these limitations, echocardiography is useful in confirmation of clinical suspicion if all three main echocardiographic signs are present (predictive positive value: 100 percent).