Contribution of pharmacologic tests to the diagnosis of left ventricular regurgitations and obstructions: a phono-echocardiographic confrontation.

Pharmacologic interventions--procedures akin to exercise tests--facilitate, and sometimes permit, the diagnosis of left ventricular regurgitations and obstructions. Particularly when, at rest, the resulting murmur a) is soft or atypical (or absent) and, b) reflects a disease combining both mechanisms (obstruction and regurgitation) during systole. In these circumstances, the echocardiogram may be nondiscriminating or incomplete, and the pharmacologic tests difficult to carry out and to interpret with this technique. Hence the necessity to combine both diagnostic procedures, phonocardiography with pharmacologic intervention, on the one hand; echocardiography, on the other. Each method provides specific and complementary information.