Heart failure is a term that frightens people more than it should. It does not mean the heart has stopped or is about to. It means the heart is not pumping or filling as well as it should, and that this is producing symptoms — usually breathlessness, fatigue, or swelling in the legs.

It has many causes, and identifying which one applies matters, because the treatment differs. That is where imaging does most of its work: establishing how the heart is functioning, what the muscle looks like, and whether the pressures in the lungs are raised.

Pulmonary hypertension — raised pressure in the arteries of the lungs — can produce very similar symptoms and is often first suspected on an echocardiogram.

Management is usually long-term and involves medication, monitoring and adjustment over time rather than a single intervention.