Strong Heart and Vascular Center

Diagnosis

Non-Invasive Tests

Echocardiogram (ultrasound, echocardiography study or "echo")

This simple, painless test bounces sound waves off the heart to produce moving and still pictures of it. (This technique, similar to "sonar," is also used with pregnant women to produce images of fetuses.)

The moving pictures, showing the heart at work, can help diagnose problems with the heart’s motion, arrhythmias, pumping ability (the amount of blood pumped with each contraction of the heart muscle),
valves, mass and size. There are several types of echocardiograms, including:

• Doppler Study: measures the speed of the blood flowing through the heart.

• Color-Flow Doppler Echocardiogram: adds color to the normally black and white Doppler images, for a better look at blood flow patterns.

• Stress Echocardiogram (stress echo): a combination of an echocardiogram and an electrocardiogram (or EKG), that gives a picture of your heart when it is working harder than normal (when you exercise, are extremely physically active, etc.). Normally, you will exercise on a
  treadmill or stationary bicycle, at various speeds and elevations, while the echo and EKG are taken.

  If you aren't able to exercise, for whatever reason, you can be given an injection of a drug that causes the heart to react as if you were exercising. (This is often called a pharmacological stress test or chemical stress test.) Two possible drugs are:

  • Dobumatine

  • Persantine

  A myocardial perfusion scan may be done at the same time as the stress echo when Dobumatine is used; it’s almost always done when Persantine is used. You are given a small dose of a harmless radioactive tracer during the stress test. Then a specialized camera (called a "gamma camera") "sees" the tracer as it passes through the chambers of your heart, creating the pictures that may reveal problems in heart muscle and blood vessels. Pictures of your heart are also taken while you’re resting and the two types of images are compared.

• Transesophageal Echocardiogram (TEE): a specialized form of echochardiogram, in which you swallow a small, flexible tube, through which the echo pictures are taken. This allows a view of the heart through the esophagus (the tube which connects your mouth and stomach), giving
  diagnostic information not possible from other perspectives.

More information on echocardiograms