ABSTRACT
Introduction Echocardiography plays a critical role in the evaluation of patients with heart valve prostheses, and Doppler echocardiography in particular has proven to be valuable for the assessment of prosthetic valve function. Similarly to native valve stenosis, pressure gradients, pressure half-time and effective orifice areas can be measured. However, the interpretation of these data is far more difficult in patients with prosthetic heart valves.
