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The first step on diagnosing aortic stenosis (see “What is aortic stenosis?”) uses to be its suspect after presenting any of the symptoms (“What are the symptoms for aortic stenosis?”).
In other occasions, a heart murmur during the auscultation is detected, and it consists on an abnormal sound due to the turbulence generating the narrowing of the aortic valve.
Diagnosis testing in aortic stenosis
In both cases, the specialist will decide the next step on the diagnosis process, which generally is the use of one of the following complementary tests (not necessarily in that order and not all of them):
Electrocardiogram
This test can identify the enlargement of the heart chambers, ventricular hypertrophy or arrhythmias, that provide more details for the diagnosis.
Chest x-ray
Chest x-ray, on these cases, helps us to identify a heart or aorta enlargement, which is important in the diagnosis process of the aortic stenosis.
Echocardiogram
On its transthoracic or transoesophageal modes, the echocardiogram is the main diagnosis test for analysing the aortic valve stenosis, as well as its consequences on the left ventricle.
CT, MRI
Those imaging tests can help us obtain details about the heart and the aorta, interesting for the aortic stenosis diagnosis and the choice of the most proper choice (TAVI route, conventional surgery,…)
Cardiac catheterization
In some cases, an invasive study of the heart may be necessary, through injection of some type of contrast in the heart and its arteries (coronary angiography) with the aim of evaluating different parameters, as the heart function or the features of the coronary arteries or those that would be used to introduce the valve through TAVI.
