[Echocardiography in patients with ischemic heart disease].

The assessment of the patients with coronary artery disease is one of the most important clinical applications of echocardiography. The importance of this application lies in the fact that coronary artery disease is the most common form of heart disease and the leading cause of death in all industrial countries. Echocardiography plays a diagnostic role at all stages of the disease from the early detection of transient, stress-induced, ischemic dysfunction, through the phase of acute myocardial infarction and its attendant complications, to the development of chronic ischemic heart disease and heart failure. Finally, echocardiography often provides important prognostic data in patients with coronary artery disease.