What does an echo cardiogram show pertaining to the heart?

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An echocardiogram can actually tell you quite a bit about the heart's structure and function.
To start with, it can tell you about the state of the valves, whether they have any vegetations on them (bacterial growth that can happen in endocarditis), and whether or not they are stenotic (opening poorly) or regurgitant (closing poorly). It can also tell you if there are any holes in anywhere that shouldn't be there, such as a patent foramen ovale or a hole in the atrial or ventricular septum.
It can see if there is any fluid in the pericardial sack, a tough, fibrous membrane surrounding the heart, and if there is, you can begin to tell whether there is enough that it's interfering with the function of the heart (tamponade).
An echo can also tell you about function, you can see the heart contracting, so you can tell if it's normal, or if all or part of the heart isn't contracting well. You can also tell if the heart isn't relaxing normally (diastolic dysfunction), though this is a bit more difficult to tease out. Finally, you can get a good idea of what the ejection fraction, which is a measure of what percentage of the blood that the heart has in it gets pumped out during contraction (normal is around 50-70%).
Now, often it's not able to tell all of those things with perfect accuracy, but in the case of a good echo, you can really learn a lot.

An echocardiogram shows blood flow through the heart. From this, we can see if there are any problems with the heart valves, or with the way the heart is pumping.

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What does an echo cardiogram show pertaining to the heart?

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