Q. What’s the difference between transesophageal echocardiography and regular echocardiography?

A. The short answer is that transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) provides better, more in-depth images of the heart than traditional echocardiography.

Both standard echocardiography and TEE use a device called a transducer. The transducer converts sound waves from the heart muscle into a moving picture that can be viewed on a video screen. The difference is that in standard echocardiography, the transducer is placed on top of the person’s chest, but in TEE, it’s placed inside the body, through a probe inserted into the esophagus (the muscular tube that transports food from the mouth to the stomach). By being positioned so close to the heart, the TEE transducer can produce much clearer moving images than standard echocardiography can.

TEE is proving to be especially useful in the diagnostic evaluations of people who have had a stroke, transient ischemic attack (TIA, or “mini-stroke”), or embolism (a blood clot that travels through the bloodstream, possibly to lodge in the heart or brain, where it can cause a heart attack or stroke). In one study of 234 adults, TEE was able to provide information useful enough to provoke changes in the treatment or evaluation of about a quarter of the participants who had had a stroke, TIA, or embolism.