Ethan Tumarkin
University of Utah, UT·Biomedical Engineering
To see the back of the heart clearly, cardiologists pass an ultrasound probe down the esophagus, which sits directly behind the heart. This test, transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), is done more than a million times a year in the United States.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Engineering
- Topics
transesophageal echocardiography
nasal TEE
cardiac ultrasound
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Design and build a trans-nasal transesophageal echocardiography prototype that passes an ultrasound probe through the nasal orifice to image the heart from the esophagus without sedation.
- Engineer the probe to overcome the failures of prior nasal systems: poor image quality, unacceptable rates of nasal bleeding, and thermal burns to the esophageal wall from overheated ultrasound probes.
- Test whether the nasal system acquires high-quality images of posterior cardiac structures such as the mitral valve and left atrial appendage, comparable to conventional sedated transesophageal echocardiography.
More about the research
It beats imaging from the chest surface because the lungs no longer scatter the sound waves, giving sharp views of structures such as the mitral valve and the left atrial appendage. It is used to diagnose infection of the heart valves, to evaluate critically ill and trauma patients, and to guide care before and after heart surgery. The catch is that swallowing the probe requires sedation, and sedation is where most of the harm comes from: dangerously low blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms and breathing problems, risks magnified because these patients are often already sick. Sedation also demands special procedure rooms and trained staff, raising cost and limiting who can get the test.
Why it matters
Removing sedation from a test performed over a million times a year in the US could cut the cardiovascular and respiratory complications that cause most TEE-related harm, lower procedure cost, and let the test be done outside specialized suites, making detailed heart imaging available to more patients, including critically ill ones. An awake exam may also give more accurate information in exercise mitral valve assessment and in stroke of unknown cause.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
University of Utah: 58 labs on PI Pages, $789M a year on research, 366 research doctorates a year.
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