What these pages are for
Plain Spoken Health publishes general explanations of cardiology terms, records, and conversations with a treating team. Our guides help you prepare questions. They do not provide an individual diagnosis, a treatment recommendation, or an interpretation of original scans.
Where the medical information comes from
New medical explanations link to their sources alongside the relevant text. Sources include the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, MedlinePlus, the CDC, and SCAI. Source links let you read the original information and check its context.
Publication and update dates refer to our pages. They do not mean a source published new guidance on that date. Recommendations can change, and your treating clinician needs to apply information to your circumstances.
Authorship and review
The public guides are published under Plain Spoken Health. A publisher attribution is not a claim that an individual physician has medically reviewed the article. The physician-led review of a patient’s records is a separate service.
Read about the physician’s roleQuestions or corrections
If a guide is unclear or a source link is broken, email a website content question. Include the page title and the passage you are asking about. Please leave out medical records and personal health information.
For your own care
Bring medical questions and new or changing symptoms to your treating team. Do not wait for a website response in an emergency; call 911.