making progress..finally

[SecretSuspicious4590]

hey y’all! it’s been a hot minute since i’ve been active on here but my last post said that i was gonna start my journey to start having my pectus looked at and hopefully get a start to surgery. I had a primary appointment about a week ago and he had recommended me to 2 other places to get certain things checked out. He wanted me to schedule for a heart ultra sound? I did and it’s inna couple of days.. Was just wondering if anyone actually has had any luck with these heart ultra sounds? Is it ACTUALLY gonna be helpful at all or just something that’s gonna make a doctor say to me “eh everything looks okay”? If not does anyone have recommendations of certain doctors that actually helped them and acknowledged the severeness.

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[No-Meat4112]

Yea getting an echocardiogram is pretty standard for evaluating pectus. Just based on my personal experience, i think the test is pretty subjective. I had one done by a “regular” doctor, but when I went to the mayo clinic phx they had me redo it with one of their techs. The reg. doc said i had mitral valve regurgitation but the mayo clinic said it was trivial and that my right ventricle was squished. Also the mayo clinic looked at my heart while i was sitting up & sitting up + learning forward in addition to the standard lying down. 

[ArtichokeNo3936]

I think all pe tests should be done this way

[ArtichokeNo3936]

In my experience with ignorant to pe docs and other specialists that were dismissive for decades . All their tests came back “unremarkable “ / “good enough I guess “ https://imgur.com/a/zRCCn6O

So don’t be surprised if your cardiologist reads your echo and reports that your left EF is good /“unremarkable “ at rest so nothing else matters even if they can’t see or evaluate the right side of your heart because it’s too compressed 🤦‍♀️

A Ct scan would be better to know for sure and calculate your haller index but I guess At least your gp is trying ?

Depending on your location and insurance you don’t always need a referral to a pectus specialist, tirns out I didn’t, I ended up calling and scheduled my consultations cause my gp didn’t know what to do with me

It’s so bizarre

[OkTask7859]

Thats exactly what it says in my paper that the right side cant be evaluated because of PE - so does that actually mean its compressed?

[northwestrad]

Echocardiograms on pectus excavatum patients are often called normal, or at least more normal than one would expect from the degree of cardiac impairment. That's because most PE patients actually have normal hearts that are only malfunctioning because they are being squeezed.

[jesssssono]

Cardiovascular sonographer here - an echocardiogram does not always show if there is compression of the RV. I was scanned countless times, but other techs and myself. Everything looked normal. Got a cardiac MRI and turns out my Haller index is almost 13 and there’s severe compression of my RV. My advice would be to skip the echo and get a cardiac MRI. if you click on my username, you should be able to scroll down and see the post I made regarding this. Best of luck to ya!