Echocardiographic Reference Values: Why Brazil Needs to Speak With its Own Voice

Echocardiographic measurements are cornerstones of diagnosis, risk stratification, and therapeutic decision-making across a wide range of cardiovascular conditions. Despite this, clinical practice in Brazil still relies largely on reference ranges derived from European and North American populations. In a country of continental dimensions, marked by substantial ethnic, anthropometric, and socioeconomic heterogeneity, such extrapolation raises legitimate concerns regarding diagnostic accuracy and equity in cardiovascular assessment.

In this issue of the Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia, Rodrigues et al. present a timely and methodologically sound study establishing contemporary reference values for echocardiographic parameters in healthy Brazilian adults. The inclusion of 496 volunteers recruited from 20 echocardiography laboratories across the five major geographic regions of the country provides unprecedented national representativeness and addresses a longstanding gap in Brazilian cardiology.

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