The ever-increasing trend toward noninvasive monitoring puts echocardiography at the forefront and considerable effort has been made to define its role in this setting.

Invasive pressure measurement is the only accurate way to analyze ventricular diastolic pressures but this is not feasible outside the catheterization laboratory, whereas the use of a pulmonary artery catheter or Doppler echocardiography, using surrogate measurements, is available at the bedside.

A number of recent studies have investigated the accuracy of combined or single echocardiographic parameters in determining left ventricular (LV) diastolic pressures as compared to those obtained invasively.

The recent literature on the clinical application of echocardiography on the accuracy in determining left ventricular noninvasively demonstrates that although far from perfect, it can be a very useful tool.

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