Coronary Heart Disease: Diagnosis

Transcript

The best way to diagnose it is to have a good doctor do a good history and physical. But the physical is not a good way to diagnose heart disease unless you’re having a heart attack where you’re sweaty and nauseated and grabbing your chest. Sometimes an electrocardiogram becomes necessary. An electrocardiogram is basically 12 leads applied to your body and then the electricity of the heart is measured. And oftentimes there are findings on the electrocardiogram that could tell us that there was an old heart attack or that they might be current ischemia, which means reduced blood flow, or current injury, which is a much more serious situation and essentially an emergency.