ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY EXPERTISE ONLINE

Daniel Shindler, MD, director of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) Echocardiography Laboratory at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, receives more than 1.8 million hits per year on his Echocardiography Journal Web site (http:// www2.umdnj.edu/~shindler). Designed for use by doctors and healthcare professionals, this resource features hundreds of topics, cardiac ultrasound images, animations, professional publications and informational links arranged in alphabetical as well as the chronological order in which they first appeared on the site. Shindler, who is an associate professor of clinical medicine, first started "providing online medical articles and images dedicated to the ultrasound of the heart" in April, 1995.

Through echocardiography, scientists map the heart. High frequency sound waves are sent into a patient’s chest where they bounce off the heart’s walls and valves. The resulting echoes can be electronically plotted to produce pictures of the heart.

Meanwhile, Shindler’s site allows experts to discuss, share and update one another on everything from the Alfieri procedure (a repair done to the mitral valve), to diseases of the pericardium. As host of the Inter-national Echocardiography Discussion Group, a link he offers via Yahoo, he brings international, instantaneous collaboration to a new level. Would you like a full description of a surgery performed at King Khalid University Hospital? Or a Spanish description of malignant pericardial effusion at the University of Bonn Medical Center? Or the latest developments in prosthetic valves? From statistics on heart disease to pituitary adenomas in acromegaly, this electronic journal is so comprehensive that among 150,000 echocardiography Web sites worldwide, it is rated number one.