How can aortic stenosis or pulmonic stenosis be diagnosed?
Most affected dogs will have an obvious heart murmur, although the murmur may only be heard over a small area or be muffled, especially in a fidgety dog An ECG (electrocardiogram) may help in diagnosis; this service is becoming more readily available from veterinary surgeons m practice. X-rays of the heart may be normal in aortic stenosis, but can be helpful in pulmonic stenosis and other heart conditions. Ultrasound scans (echocardiography) of the heart may show the stenosis or thickening of the heart muscle in severe cases, but may fail to detect milder cases. The most reliable method of diagnosing congenital heart defects is Doppler echocardiography, which can show blood turbulence at the source of a murmur and with which measurement of the speed of blood flow indicates the severity of the lesion. This is only available currently at some of the Veterinary Schools. Congenital heart defects can also be diagnosed by careful postmortem examination by an experienced pathologist. Can aort
