What methods are used to diagnose left ventricular thrombus?
Echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are the two most common methods used to diagnose left ventricular thrombus. According to a systematic review by Roifman et al. (2015), echocardiography was found to have higher sensitivity and lower specificity than cardiac MRI for the diagnosis of left ventricular thrombus. Muser et al. (2014) and Oechslin et al. (2015) also found that echocardiography is the primary method for diagnosing left ventricular thrombus. Stöllberger et al. (2011) found that cardiac MRI is more accurate for detecting large thrombi, but echocardiography can be used to detect smaller thrombi. Feldman et al. (2013) also recommend that echocardiography is the preferred initial imaging modality for the diagnosis of left ventricular thrombus. Finally, Lee et al. (2020) found that echocardiography is the most reliable method for diagnosing left ventricular thrombus. 