都留 正人¹, 中島 義明¹, 森田 哲夫¹, 岸本 欣也¹, 上田 治¹, 大谷 幸広¹, 宝田 明², 銕 寛之², 今井 直昭², 山崎 亨², 吉田 浩², 横田 慶之³, 福崎 恒³

Masato TSURU¹, Yoshiaki NAKAJIMA¹, Tetsuo MORITA¹, Kinya KISHIMOTO¹, Osamu UEDA¹, Yukihiro OHTANI¹, Akira TAKARADA², Hiroyuki KUROGANE², Naoaki IMAI², Tohru YAMASAKI², Yutaka YOSHIDA², Yoshiyuki YOKOTA³, Hisashi FUKUZAKI³

¹兵庫県立姫路循環器病センター放射線科, ²兵庫県立姫路循環器病センター循環器科, ³神戸大学医学部第一内科

¹Department of Radiology, Himeji Cardiovascular Center, ²Department of Cardiology, Himeji Cardiovascular Center, ³The First Department of Internal Medicine, Kobe University School of Medicine

キーワード : Ultrasonic coupling medium, Right ventricular anterior wall, Solid intercalary method, Echocardiography

Right ventricular function has been analyzed by angiocardiography, cardiac catheterization, cardiac scintigraphy and ultrasonic doppler method. The right ventricular wall has been already investigated using ultrasonotomography and M-mode echocardiography, but those observations possibly include lots errors, because the anterior wall of right ventricle (RV) is not far from the surface of the chest and because the differentiation of RV wall from the well developed trabeculae is not easy.
We studied the RV anterior wall with a brand new technique. That is an immersion method which has currently been utilized for the ultrasonic examination of the surface tissues by placing the solid ultrasonic coupling medium between the probe and the body surface. This technique was called Solid Intercalation Technique (SICT) and the preliminary experiment and the clinical application of SICT on the evaluation of RV anterior wall thickness were performed in this investigation.
Preliminary experiment was performed as follows. The representation of the target for the Ring Down Zone was visually compared and the most suitable thickness of oil jelly was determined. The target located 4 mm below the surface was most clearly defined when oil jelly, 4 cm thick was used.