I am more short of breath than I used to be

Becoming more breathless than you used to be, doing something you have always been able to do, is worth investigating. It is easy to attribute to age or fitness, and sometimes that is right — but it is also one of the ways heart problems first show themselves.

The heart and the lungs produce very similar symptoms, so part of the assessment is establishing which system is responsible. An echocardiogram answers a great deal of that at once: how well the heart is pumping, whether the valves are working, and whether the pressures in the lungs look raised.

Where the question is about the heart muscle itself, MRI can add information that ultrasound cannot.