Review of Ultrasound Contrast Agents in Current Clinical Practice With Special Focus On DEFINITY^® in Cardiac Imaging

Abstract

Echocardiography is the most widely used noninvasive modality to evaluate the structure and function of the cardiac muscle in daily practice. However, up to 15–20% of echocardiograms are considered suboptimal. To enable accurate assessment of cardiac function and wall motion abnormality, the use of ultrasound microbubble contrast has shown substantial benefits in cases of salvaging nondiagnostic studies and enhancing the diagnostic accuracy in daily practice. DEFINITY^® is a perflutren based, lipid shelled microbubble contrast agent, which is US FDA approved for left ventricular opacification. The basis of ultrasound microbubbles, its development, and the clinical role of DEFINITY (characteristics, indications and case examples, side effect profile and existing evidence) is the subject of discussion in this review.

Keywords:

• cardiac mass
• cardiac shunts
• ejection fraction
• endocardial opacification
• indications
• microbubbles
• pulmonary hypertension
• thrombus
• ultrasound contrast agents

Supplementary data

To view the supplementary data that accompany this paper please visit the journal website at:www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2217/fca-2020-0049

Financial & competing interests disclosure

K Ananthsubramaniam has been on the speaker bureau of Lantheus Medical Imaging and has served as a primary investigator for multicenter clinical trials by Lantheus Medical Imaging. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Company review disclosure

In addition to the peer-review process, with the author’s consent, the manufacturer of the product discussed in this article was given the opportunity to review the manuscript for factual accuracy. Changes were made by the author at their discretion and based on scientific or editorial merit only. The author maintained full control over the manuscript, including content, wording and conclusions.