What to do and what to pay attention to when checking your baby's heart

The physical health of many newborn babies is not very good, which makes many of our parents and friends very worried. In fact, this is unnecessary. We can use a series of examination measures to check whether there are any problems with our babies. Maybe everyone does not have a clear understanding of what to do and what precautions to take when checking the baby's heart. Let us learn about what to do and what precautions to take when checking the baby's heart.

1. Electrocardiogram, including "conventional electrocardiogram" and "24-hour dynamic electrocardiogram", mainly to detect arrhythmias, but also to reflect cardiac enlargement, myocardial damage, cardiac ischemia and infarction

2. Ultrasound cardiogram, also often called cardiac color Doppler ultrasound, mainly looks at the structure of the heart and adjacent large blood vessels, as well as pericardial effusion

3. Chest X-rays, including plain films and 3-position or 4-position films (anteroposterior, left lateral, right lateral, oblique), mainly to see the size and shape of the heart, such as rheumatic heart disease, congenital heart disease, heart enlargement due to various reasons, etc.

4. Cardiac CT and 3D imaging are rarely used. When an examination is needed, angiography is often used at the same time. It can check the size, structure, and presence of dissection and aneurysm of each chamber of the heart and adjacent large blood vessels. New technologies can also check the direction of the coronary arteries, whether there is stenosis and obstruction, etc.

5. Magnetic resonance imaging has similar effects to CT angiography and is theoretically more advantageous, but is less commonly used in practice because of a lack of experience.

6. Stress tests, including exercise treadmill test, dobutamine test, dipyridamole steal test (rarely used), etc., are mainly used for suspected coronary heart disease and also for specific arrhythmia induction.

7. Radionuclide myocardial imaging, both at rest and during stress, for suspected myocardial ischemia

8. Blood tests include myocardial enzyme spectrum, cardiac troponin, brain natriuretic peptide, blood lipids, C-reactive protein, homocysteine, catecholamines, angiotensin, aldosterone, etc. There are many other blood tests that can be used in the examination of specific heart diseases.

These are the most common ones. Almost all of them can be done in outpatient clinics. There are more contents for hospitalization, such as the 6-minute walk test for evaluating the severity and efficacy of heart failure, the upright tilt test for syncope, and invasive examinations such as coronary angiography, intracardiac electrophysiological examination, ventriculography, floating catheter examination, myocardial biopsy, and pericardiocentesis. There should be many more.

The above content introduces us to what to do and what precautions to take when checking the baby's heart. When we want to understand our baby's heart health, we must make the relevant preparations introduced above. At the same time, we also need to pay great attention to the matters that need attention, so that we can better check our baby's heart condition.