Almost every effort in the care of patients with heart disease begins with some description of disordered physiologic performance or mor phologic anatomy. Since the early work of Edler and Hertz in 1954, echocardiographic methods have grown in importance and reliability for the diagnosis of many cardiac disorders. The placement of a maneuverable transducer on the tip of a modified endoscope is the result of relatively recent technologic advances. The transesophageal approach is now a reality for obtaining new information from ultra-sonic images of a beating human heart. Since images obtained...