The more tests he read, the more tightly Zhou Can's brows knit.
From this patient's X‑ray, it was clear that the chest film showed no obvious cardiomegaly or pulmonary edema. Color Doppler echocardiography showed cardiac size within the normal range, normal valvular function, but a left ventricular ejection fraction below normal.
After carefully going through all of the patient's tests one by one, he realized that the cause of illness in this 17‑year‑old boy was far more complicated than imagined.
Generally speaking, heart failure will at least be accompanied by some kind of lesion in the heart.
Yet whether it was the size of the heart, the myocardium, or the tricuspid valve, mitral valve and so on, everything was normal. You could say that apart from an ejection fraction that failed to meet the standard, everything else about the patient's heart was normal.
Of course, because of insufficient pumping capacity, his heart rate was already much higher than normal.
