Practice guidelines of Vascular Doppler Echo 2022 of the Argentina Federation of Cardiology. FAC Peripheral Vascular Disease and Stroke Commitee.

Abstract

Vascular Doppler ultrasound is considered worldwide today as the non-invasive technique of first choice for the evaluation of all vascular territories of the body, with the advantages of its very high sensitivity and specificity and positive and negative predictive values, its low cost, reproducibility, total availability and portability of equipment, which allows "bed side" studies. Nowadays vascular ultrasound is a subspecialty in itself, of great importance for its contribution to the clinic for diagnosis,
decision making and therapeutic guidance in many cases.
As with any method that uses ultrasound, it is operator dependent and that is why achieving accreditation to be able to do these studies correctly takes a long time learning and training. Being a "flow observer" is the key to a good vascular sonographer because the flows "speak", they give us invaluable information that allows a great diagnostic approach. To study all vascular territories there are other excellent techniques, such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), capillaroscopy, conventional angiography, etc. It is not our intention to compare the techniques; they are all complementary and not exclusive. The Vascular Medicine and Stroke Committee of FAC presents this Vascular Echo Practice Guideline to be one more tool for the cardiologist who has been trained or is being trained in this exciting subspecialty, in permanent evolution, offering practical considerations of the principles and practice of vascular ultrasound.

-Dr. Adrián H. D’Ovidio