Peninsula Cardiology: Echocardiography

Echocardiography

The Echocardiogram

What is an Echocardiogram? The echocardiogram is a cardiac ultrasound. We bounce sound waves off your heart and take pictures of those sound waves as they bounce back to the machine. It sounds rather "high-tech" and it is! In the Navy, it takes a lot of training for the technician to be able to distinguish between a submarine and a whale. Similarly, our physicians and technicians undergo a lot of training so they can get great pictures of your heart and its movements. These pictures show us how well the muscle and valves are working and can even assess how blood is flowing through the heart. The sound waves will NOT cause any damage to the heart. A typical picture of an echocardiogram is seen below.

An echocardiogram is ordered for the following reasons

To measure heart function (pumping function or the strength of the heart)
To check out the heart valves.
To see how much damage has been done after a heart attack.
To investigate palpitations or chest pain
To look for fluid around the heart.
To look for old heart attacks

And there are numerous others

When you enter the room, you will be asked to take off your shirt or top and put on a hospital gown and then lie down on a bed. The technician may sit on the edge of the bed next to you as shown in the picture. He/she places some jelly and a transducer (a hand-held plastic wand) on the chest. The technician will then move the wand over the chest to take the best pictures of the heart from different directions. Sometimes, the technician may have to press rather firmly to improve the quality of the pictures. Please feel free to let the technician know if you feel any discomfort. You will hear some sounds. Don’t worry this is just the machine making a computerized sound of your blood flow and is not what the heart sounds like inside you chest. At the end of the test, the technician will wipe of the jelly and you can get dressed. The technician will not be able to give you much information about the test results. A doctor must look at the entire test first and a report will then be sent to the doctor ordering the test.

Your doctor will have the results within 1-2 working days.

Make an appointment

Appointments to see Dr Teperman (Consultant and Interventional Cardiologist) are available in Frankston, Mornington and Rosebud.

Please call 9789 6011.

Services available

General Cardiology
Coronary angiography/stenting
Echocardiography (cardiac ultrasound)
ECG’s
Holter Monitors
Ambulatory Blood Pressure monitoring
Exercise stress testing
Heart failure diagnosis and management
Arrhythmia diagnosis and management
Treatment of myocardial ischaemia (angina and heart attacks)
Preventative Cardiology
Cholesterol management

Peninsula Cardiology's website does NOT offer medical advice. The material contained in these pages are offered for information purposes only. Do not act or rely upon information from this website without seeking professional medical advice. The transmission of information from this website to you is NOT intended to create nor does it create a physician-patient relationship between you and Dr Rodney Teperman. Even if Dr Teperman answers your emails, the information he provides MUST be reviewed with your physician. Dr Teperman does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, usefulness or adequacy of any resources, information, apparatus, productor process available at or from his websites.