Diagnosing Aortic Stenosis
I just received an email that reads, “Adam - I just saw in your story that you had aortic stenosis resulting from a congenital bicuspid aortic valve. How did you go about diagnosing aortic stenosis?”
Interestingly enough, my aortic stenosis was not diagnosed at birth even though I had a two-cusp, aortic heart valve. That’s right, my doctors missed the heart murmur. It was not until I was five years old that my general physician detected my problematic valve and then took steps to formally diagnose my heart defect.
Today, diagnosing aortic stenosis is achieved through one or more medical tests. The Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic suggest there are several tests a cardiologist can perform to evaluate and to diagnose aortic stenosis. Here are some of the tests used in diagnosing aortic stenosis:
- Electrocardiogram
- Chest X-Ray
- Cardiac Catheterization
- Transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE)
- Radionuclide Scans
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
As you can infer from the bullet-points above, most of the exams used to diagnose heart valve disorders (including aortic valve stenosis) are non-invasive and painless.
I hope that helps you better understand how aortic stenosis is diagnosed.
Keep on tickin!
Adam Pick is the author of The Patient’s Guide To Heart Valve Surgery. This special book was designed to help patients and caregivers better understand the opportunities and potential pitfalls of heart valve replacement and heart valve repair surgery. Ultimately, this book was written to minimize patient stress and to enhance the patient’s recovery. To learn more about Adam’s heart valve surgery book, click here.
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October 22nd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Oddly enough my bicuspid valve was not found until I was 59 years old and had an incident after running. After finding out that I had this, after takinng all the echo’s and stress tests, I could look back at my life as a child and adult that showed the symptoms but no doctor ever caught it. I just grew up thinking that my shortness of breath and feeling like I was going to blackout at times was normal. I am glad that I know about it now and I take Toprol. I don’t have high blood pressure but this med. helps the heart to relax when pumping back through.