الفهرس 
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Abstract
Summary and conclusion
Echocardiography is an integral component of the clinical service in the pediatric intensive & intermediate care units. It is available, rapid, non-invasive, safe and provides extensive information on the heart hemodynamics (Yancy CW et al, 2013).
Our aim in this study was to evaluate the role of echocardiography in pediatric intensive & intermediate care units.
This is a prospective hospital based study conducted on 170 patients from a total of 495 patients who were admitted to the ICUs (34.3%) over the study period. The study included 82 (48.24%) females and 88 (51.76%) males during the period from the 1st of August, 2016 to 31st of July, 2017. The study included 109 infant (64.12%) & 61 child (35.88%).
We performed a clinical analysis and reviewing the data of these children
in pediatric ICUs who needed echocardiography with special consideration for age ,sex ,family history especially for cardiac diseases& Consanguinity and its degree ,Complaint, onset of the disease , its duration , & indications for echocardiography.
The patients were subjected to complete clinical examination & detailed cardiac examination. They had echocardiography test by 2D, M-mode, and Doppler methods and Clinical decisions or interventions based on the echocardiographic findings were detected either medical interventions, surgical interventions, altered procedures, no intervention at all or combination of 2 or 3 of these changes &finally data was analyzed by SPSS software.
In this study we found that the most common 2 indications for echocardiography were patients with a congenital heart disease and patients with manifestations of respiratory distress.
Congenital heart disease was the most common echocardiographic finding during the study period.
In this study 61% of echocardiograms done produced new findings that resulted in additional clinical management steps especially medical interventions (30% of interventions), so there was a significant positive correlation between the findings of the study and the clinical intervention or the clinical decision.
Study Limitation:
• It is a single centered study, so the results can`t be generalized & we need multicenter studies for assessment of the importance of echocardiography.
• Relatively small sample size.
• This study was neither randomized nor blinded which hindered proper assessment of the impact of echocardiography upon the outcome of critically ill children.
Recommendation:
• Provision of echocardiography machine in PICU.
• The routine use of echocardiography in pediatric ICU for assessment of structure and hemodynamic monitoring of critically ill children and infants in the ICUs.
• Serial follow up echocardiograms for clinically indicated patients in pediatric ICUs.