[The use of Doppler in the diagnosis of intracardiac shunts in adults].

Conventional and color Doppler represent a major addition to ultrasound cardiography and the evaluation of intracardiac shunts, in adults as well as children. Above all, it concerns interauricular and interventricular communications and patent ductus arteriosus. The Doppler is superior to ultrasonography in several conditions such as the diagnosis of very small communications, muscular interventricular communications and multiple shunts. It enables to quantify the magnitude of the shunts either by determination of the area of the color flow or, more precisely, by measurement of the ratio pulmonary output/aortic output. In addition, the Doppler presents the advantage of determining the pressures in the right heart.