A few weeks ago, I saw a patient with shortness of breath during my Saturday clinic. He had been short of breath for a few weeks, and on a couple of occasions, he had also experienced mild chest pain. He has known aortic stenosis, moderate according to his last echocardiogram two years ago.
My brain kicked into autopilot, and I asked: “Have you fainted or passed out recently?” It was a flashback to medical school, where it seemed we were inundated with lists of threes.
For aortic stenosis, the triad of surgical indications for critical degrees was: angina, synkope (remember I’m Swedish) and svikt, which is Swedish for failure: specifically, congestive heart failure.
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