How is heart failure diagnosed?
Diagnosing heart failure requires a combination of clinical assessment, blood tests, and cardiac imaging. In this video, Dr Ravi Assomull, a Private Cardiologist in London, explains the role of echocardiography and NT-proBNP testing.
Learn more about Heart disease or book a consultation with Dr Assomull – no GP referral needed, appointments typically within one working day.
Transcript
Heart failure is diagnosed by using a combination of taking a clinical history, examining you, but critically undertaking an imaging scan called an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound scan of your heart. We couple all of this together with a blood test called an NT-ProBNP, which is a marker of heart failure, and taking all that information, we can make a diagnosis of heart failure. Once we've made the diagnosis of heart failure, we need to look further as to what has caused it, and imaging tests such as Cardact CT or Cardact MRI help us evaluate this.
