When you suffer from symptoms like chest pain, heart palpitations, or leg swelling, it’s natural to wonder why. Fortunately, Heart of Dixie Cardiology provides several diagnostic testing services to help you find the cause of your symptoms. With our diagnostic tests, we can discover any underlying heart conditions and create a treatment plan, including possible procedures.
Depending on your symptoms and medical history, our cardiologists may recommend any one or combination of the following diagnostic tests. To schedule diagnostic testing, contact us at one of our locations. Our healthcare professionals will help determine the type of diagnostic test that will best work for you.
When concerns exist about blood flow to or from your legs, often ultrasounds are used to image these blood vessels. These ultrasounds can identify blood clots, restrictions in arteries, or poorly functioning veins such as varicose veins. We can perform venous and arterial ultrasounds in our offices and get you results quickly.
Often, when plaque builds up in the arteries of your heart, calcium also builds up in the arteries. Coronary artery calcification (CAC) scans are a type of X-ray that looks at the amount of calcium buildup in the arteries of your heart to help risk stratify how significant the buildup is. This can help your cardiologist know if further testing may be necessary to evaluate or treat the buildup in your arteries.
An echocardiogram is a type of ultrasound that is typically used to evaluate the structure and pumping function of your heart. It is often ordered for patients that are experiencing shortness of breath, swelling, or have a heart murmur.
An electrophysiology (EP) study is a diagnostic procedure that involves measuring the heart’s electrical activity, which is useful in diagnosing both slow and fast arrhythmias. An EP study may be done for many reasons, some of which include unexplained syncope or cardiac arrest. The most common reason for doing an EP study is to do it in conjunction with a catheter ablation.
There are many reasons why you may be asked to have your heart rhythm evaluated. Sometimes it is done routinely and sometimes it is done to evaluate the cause of symptoms, such as palpitations. Heart rhythm monitoring can be done via several methods including an electrocardiogram (EKG), Holter monitor, event monitor, and implantable loop recorder (ILR). Monitoring is important to determine the type of heart rhythm in order to come up with an appropriate individualized treatment plan.
If you have a pacemaker, defibrillator, or loop recorder, remote monitoring is likely an option for you. Remote monitoring allows us to evaluate the functionality of your device, as well as be alerted to any abnormal heart rhythms in a timely manner. It is a safe and effective way to monitor you and your device, and in most cases it allows us to decrease the number of times per year that you need to be seen in the office.
If we believe the blood flow from your heart isn’t working the way it should, we may ask for you to participate in a stress test. There are many different types of stress tests—some involve walking on a treadmill and others involve chemical stress. These are performed in our office and will help us see if you have a blockage in the arteries of your heart, arrhythmia, high blood pressure, and more.
Holter monitoring is a remote form of ECG testing that typically lasts for one to two days. We may have you use a Holter monitor to help us identify an arrhythmia. In addition to wearing the Holter monitor, you’ll be asked to write down all your activities and symptoms, especially shortness of breath, chest pain, and heart palpitations.
Heart of Dixie Cardiology is a specialty subset of the Revere Health group. We have over a dozen cardiology providers throughout our locations to give you the specialized heart care that you deserve.
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