The following conditions are not applicable to transesophageal echocardiography, and its contraindications are: severe heart failure, severe arrhythmia, esophageal diseases, dysphagia, etc. Transesophageal echocardiography is to install a set of high-frequency transducer chips at the top of a flexible tube to obtain two-dimensional ultrasound and Doppler blood flow images of the heart and great vessels from the esophagus. The obtained images have high resolution, and are not affected by acoustic window conditions. They can clearly display cardiovascular structures that cannot be observed by transthoracic ultrasound, which opens up a new field of vision for observing the structure and function of the heart and great vessels, significantly improves the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound technology for cardiovascular diseases such as valvular heart disease, infective endocarditis, artificial valve dysfunction, congenital heart disease, cardiac cavity thrombosis and cardiac tumor, thoracic aortic disease, coronary heart disease, cardiomyopathy, etc., and judges the indications of cardiac catheterization and cardiac surgery.

Miniaturization and multifunction of probe are the future research directions. Compared with TTE, this is a more invasive examination, but the success rate is very high and there are few complications. In addition, compared with CT and aortography, it is a very useful tool for diagnosing traumatic aortic rupture. However, TEE is not superior to TTE in predicting the high-risk subgroup of cardiac complications, and the cost is higher. TEE is recommended when great blood vessel injury or TTE image is not ideal. Although TEE is an alternative to TTE when severe chest trauma prevents a complete examination, it is also important to understand the risks of this examination, because TEE needs to place an esophageal probe, which requires the patient to be in a good state of sedation.