Peripheral pulmonary stenosis

How is peripheral pulmonary stenosis diagnosed?

The process of arriving at a diagnosis of peripheral pulmonary stenosis usually involves several steps. Most often, a clinician will notice that your child has a heart murmur—which is a telltale noise blood makes as it flows from the left ventricle to the aorta. Heart murmurs can be detected with a stethoscope during a routine physical examination, and can also emerge during tests or treatment for another condition or problem.

The loudness of the murmur, where in the chest it is best heard and the types of noise it causes (e.g., gurgling, blowing) will all give your child’s clinician a better idea of the nature of your child’s heart problem.

Sometimes, heart defects can be detected when a baby is still in the womb. Learn more about how Children’s monitors fetal heartbeats.

Upon detection of the heart murmur, your clinician can diagnose peripheral pulmonary stenosis with one or more of the following procedures:

• a chest x-ray that produces images of the heart and lungs
• an electrocardiogram (also known as EKG or ECG), which records the heart’s electrical activity and shows any abnormal rhythms or unusual stress
• an exercise electrocardiogram, which evaluates the heart’s activity during exercise
• an echocardiogram, which uses sound waves to make a moving picture of the heart’s structure and function
• cardiac catheterization, which uses a small, flexible tube threaded up to the heart to give very detailed information about the structures within the heart 
• cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which uses magnets to produce detailed, three-dimensional pictures of the heart’s function and blood flow
• cardiac Doppler, a type of ultrasound using sound waves to measure blood flow
• pulmonary angiography, which uses a special dye to take X-ray images of the pulmonary arteries
• a lung perfusion scan, or ventilation/perfusion scan, which observes how well air and blood move through your child's lungs