What tests will be done to diagnose alcoholic cardiomyopathy?

What tests will be done to diagnose alcoholic cardiomyopathy?

To diagnose this condition, healthcare providers will typically use several of the following methods.

Physical exam

This involves a doctor examining you for visible symptoms such as swelling in your legs or bulging neck veins. They will also use a stethoscope to listen to your heart and lung sounds. Alcoholic cardiomyopathy commonly causes a crackling sound in the lungs and heart murmurs (an unusual sound in your heartbeat that can indicate a problem).

Imaging tests

To diagnose changes in the shape of your heart, doctors need to see the shape of your heart in the first place. They can do that using the following tests:

• Echocardiogram. This test uses a device held against the skin of your chest that produces ultra-high-frequency sound waves. Those waves help create a picture of your heart (much like how a bat uses sound waves to “see”).
• Electrocardiography (ECG or EKG). This test uses sensors attached to the skin of your chest to detect the electrical activity of your heart and show it as a wave on a paper printout or computer display. That lets providers see if this condition is affecting your heart’s electrical activity.
• Chest X-ray. An X-ray can often show heart enlargement.
• Cardiac computed tomography (CT) scan. This imaging test uses computer processing to assemble X-ray images into a 3-D picture of the heart.
• Heart magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This test generates images using computer processing and an extremely powerful magnet.

Some of the above tests may also use materials injected into your bloodstream that are highly visible on certain types of imaging scans. Those materials, such as contrasts or tracers, are helpful because they can reveal blood flow blockages that would be very hard to see otherwise.