Is Coronary Artery Disease Reversible?
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a serious medical issue, and it’s extremely common, too. Luckily, you can take steps to reduce CAD risks and even potentially slow or reverse disease progression. Here’s how.
How to Make Sense of Your Echocardiogram Results
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both women and men in the United States, causing over 700,000 deaths per year. Fortunately, regular cardiovascular evaluations can help reduce your risk of heart problems and manage existing diseases. Often, those evaluations include a simple, noninvasive test called an echocardiogram.
Anthony B. Lewis, MD, FACC, and the team at TLC Medical Group Inc. are committed to helping patients play proactive roles in managing their heart health, and that includes understanding how to interpret the results of their echocardiogram exams. Here, learn what echocardiograms are used for and what all those numbers and terms really mean.
Echocardiogram basics
An echocardiogram is essentially an ultrasound scan of your heart. Unlike an electrocardiogram, which measures only the heart’s electrical activity, an echocardiogram provides detailed information about the structure and function of your heart and the blood vessels around it.
Echocardiograms use a special handheld device called a transducer to send ultrasound waves painlessly through your skin. These waves “bounce off” your heart, delivering data that are then captured and “translated” into images and real-time video of your heart.
During your echocardiogram, we can evaluate:
- The size and shape of your heart
- The thickness of your heart walls
- The structure and function of your heart valves
- Your heart’s pumping function and rhythm
- The way blood flows in and around your heart
- The space around your heart (the pericardium)
- The pressure inside your heart
- The presence of clots, tumors, or other blockages
These evaluations enable our team to monitor you for changes associated with many types of heart disease and to monitor the treatment of existing diseases so we can adjust your therapy when needed.
Making sense of your results
Echocardiogram results typically feature a lot of terms and abbreviations that describe the dimensions of specific parts of your heart and how your heart is functioning. There are literally dozens of abbreviations that may be used. Some of the most common include LV, RV, LA, RA, Ao, and ISV — all abbreviations that refer to specific areas evaluated during your exam.
Specifically, terms that include “LV” or “RV” refer to the left and right ventricles, the lower chambers of your heart, while “LA” or RA” refer to the left and right atria, the upper chambers of your heart. The term hypertrophy is used to describe unusually thick walls of your heart or its chambers, while Ao refers to your aorta.
Other terms refer to the way your heart functions. For instance, the abbreviation “EF” stands for ejection fraction, a measurement of how much blood your heart pumps out with each beat. A normal EF is typically between 55% and 70%. Lower numbers may indicate a problem with the way your heart is pumping.
You may see the words diastole or systole, two terms that refer to the way your heart beats. Systole refers to the period of time when your heart contracts to push blood out, while diastole refers to the resting phase between beats.
Rely on your doctor
Knowing common abbreviations and terms is interesting, but to truly understand the results of your echocardiogram, you need to discuss them with your doctor. A single echocardiogram gathers an enormous amount of useful data about your heart. Your doctor serves as an interpreter to provide you with information that can help you keep your heart healthy.
Our team may recommend lifestyle changes, medication, medical treatment, or additional evaluations based on your results. To schedule your echocardiogram or to have your cardiovascular health evaluated, request an appointment online or over the phone with Dr. Lewis and the team at TLC Medical Group in Port St. Lucie, Florida, today.
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