Can echo detect old heart attacks - Heart Disorders Message Board

dheart · 02-25-2006, 07:57 PM

Hi,
Can echo detect old heart attacks or is it upto the skill of the person doing the echo ?

Thanks

enie · 02-25-2006, 09:22 PM

Because of my own experiences with echoes, I believe that if a person has a stress echo and there is an area that was damaged from a heart attack it should show up. Then it is up to the people doing the echo and the Technician finding it or say all clear.
Personally I think that only a stress echo can be trusted, not just an echo.
For me, it was up to the skill of the person reading the echo and whether they knew what they were looking for. All my plain echo tests always came back negative of any evidence of my heart attacks. Once one of my Doctors ordered a stress echo with contrast and he came in to supervise it. That Doctor saw that my aorta was slightly enlarged (my Marfan stuff), but nothing of a heart attack. The Technician didn't see it until the Doc showed her. Later when I had heart surgery my heart showed evidence of wide spread scaring from several heart attacks, my surgeon went back over my old tests and saw what they had missed. It was there, they just didn't know what to look for. For me there was no individual area that they could point at and say, yes, this is the problem. I’m just a heart patient and I only knows from my own experiences, so don't compare your problem with mine. My problem was kind of unusual. It was all around the outside of my heart and hard to spot. But even my heart disease was visible on the stress echo, they just didn’t know what to look for. If it were my heart, I would ask for the better test. I know it’s a good test, if it is read correctly.

dheart · 02-25-2006, 10:08 PM

Thanks ernie,
I am too having problems. Six months back I went to a doc with chest pain complains. He ordered ecg, blood urea, creatinine, routine urine examination, chest xray. All came out good. Also had some bp 150/94. Last month another doc ordered echo. A md did my echo. All came out ok. Ever since I am having problems with bp. Inspite of under medication once bp shot to 210/100. But it has been down ever since. But I must also say I have not been feeling well. Sometimes I get very very anxious about my health. I lead a very inactive life and my profession invloves sitting long hours at desk and staring at the computer. Other wise I think my eating habits are healthy I mean I have never drunk,somked. I do drink a bottle of coke sometimes. Don't indulge in oily food. I am very scared.

Thanks for reading

started04 · 02-26-2006, 02:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dheart

Hi,
Can echo detect old heart attacks or is it upto the skill of the person doing the echo ?

Thanks

A heart attack (MI) is an episode that damages the heart muscle. The tech who did my echo let me look at the visual display on screen showing the heart's contraction and relaxation. It was apparent there was some impairment at the apex (bottom) of the heart. The small area looked to flutter. It seems to me a heart with damaged muscle is very easily viewed as a problem.

But if not easily seen, the degree of impairment is a matter of calculations with echo software by defining (outlining manually with a transducer) the borders of the heart's ventricle size at peak of relaxation and then again at the completion of contraction. Calculations can determine wall motion deficiencies when compared to normal ranges and expressed as the efficiency fraction (EF). Normal is 50% to 70 pumped out of the left ventricle for each heart beat.