LIMA, Ohio (WLIO) - One of the ways that specialists can look at a patient's heart is through an echo, or an ultrasound of the heart.
That's what Jenny Koenig specializes in at Mercy Health - St. Rita's. She uses an echocardiography machine to get a look at the patient's heart through their chest, taking pictures and monitoring how their heart moves. It's just one step for patients that are dealing with cardiac issues.
"Most of the time, the echoes are ordered by doctors; they go to their doctor with chest pain or shortness of breath, or maybe they feel their heart beat irregularly, and the doctor would order an echo because of that," Koenig says.
Koenig says that providing echoes for patients is a fulfilling job as the heart is of course a very central part of a person's overall health.
"I love it because we get to do the echo and see what's going on, and hopefully get answers for them," Koenig says. "One day, I did an echo on a three-hour-old and a lady that was 103, so it's really fun."
To become an echo tech, a person would have to earn a degree in echocardiography. Koenig says that high schoolers who may be interested in this field can also get some hands on experience with heart echoes by shadowing professionals at St. Rita's, as actually being in the room is a different experience altogether from reading about it in a textbook.
"To see the heart move and hear it move is a huge thing, and a lot of people get excited, like, 'oh my gosh, that's my heart', so that part's fun," says Koenig. "It's exciting too - a couple of people that I've done echoes on as babies are now echo text themselves, so that's pretty cool."
Area universities that offer a echocardiography degree include the University of Findlay, Owens Community College, and the Ohio State University.
