August 18, 2026
Denver Health Emergency Medicine has launched a new program that gives doctors a powerful new way to see inside the heart during a cardiac arrest. The tool is called resuscitative transesophageal echocardiography, or rTEE for short.
Regular heart ultrasounds work from outside the body, but rTEE is different. It uses a small probe placed in the esophagus to capture clear, continuous images of the heart. Doctors can use it during CPR without ever stopping chest compressions.
Since launching, the ED team has completed dozens of rTEE studies. The tool has helped doctors compress the chest in exactly the right spot for more effective CPR, spot blood clots in real time, and guide pacemaker placement in critically ill patients. With this kind of detailed, real-time view, doctors can figure out what's causing a cardiac arrest and treat it faster than ever before.
Fred Milgrim, MD, and Matthew Riscinti, MD, who also serves as Denver Health's system-wide Point-of-Care Ultrasound Director, built the program from scratch. They've already trained more than half of the emergency medicine faculty in the new rTEE protocols.
The new program builds on Denver Health's long-standing investment in point-of-care ultrasound and places the department among a small but growing group of top academic ERs offering this life-saving technology. Looking ahead, the team expects rTEE to keep improving outcomes for the sickest patients who come through Denver Health's doors, while also creating new opportunities for research and for training future doctors.
