The current state of myocardial contrast echocardiography: what can we read between the lines?

Myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE) is advocated for the assessment of myocardial perfusion in addition to wall motion during stress echocardiography for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease.1,2 We therefore read with interest the article by Bhattacharyya et al. 3 on behalf of the British Society of Echocardiography detailing the current status and performance of stress echocardiography in the UK. In particular, we note the limited performance of MCE with only a small number of units (10.5%) using this technique, and a corresponding ‘under-utilization’ of vasodilator stress.Given the emerging literature,4–6 the observed uptake …