Cardiology diagnostic tests and procedures

Cardiology diagnostic tests and procedures
Intervention
ICD-9-CM	89.4-89.6
MeSH	D006334
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The diagnostic tests in cardiology are methods of identifying heart conditions associated with healthy vs. unhealthy, pathologic heart function.

Obtaining a medical history is always the first "test", part of understanding the likelihood of significant disease, as detectable within the current limitations of clinical medicine. Yet heart problems often produce no symptoms until very advanced, and many symptoms, such as palpitations and sensations of extra or missing heart beats correlate poorly with relative heart health vs disease. Hence, a history alone is rarely sufficient to diagnose a heart condition.

Auscultation employs a stethoscope to more easily hear various normal and abnormal sounds, such as normal heart beat sounds and the usual heart beat sound changes associated with breathing versus heart murmurs.

A variety of blood tests are available for analyzing cholesterol transport behavior, HDL, LDL, triglycerides, lipoprotein little a, homocysteine, C-reactive protein, blood sugar control: fasting, after eating or averages using glycosylated albumen or hemoglobin, myoglobin, creatine kinase, troponin, brain-type natriuretic peptide, etc. to assess the evolution of coronary artery disease and evidence of existing damage. A great many more physiologic markers related to atherosclerosis and heart function are used and being developed and evaluated in research.

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