What is a nuclear stress test? Cardiology Basics

What is a nuclear stress test? Cardiology Basics Usual stress test for the evaluation of coronary artery disease is a treadmill exercise ECG. It is commonly part of general health check-up and is widely available. But there are certain situations when the exercise ECG is not interpretable as in a person with left bundle branch block. Then a nuclear stress test will be useful. While exercise ECG tells you that there is a probability of obstructions in coronary arteries, it most often does not identify the region of myocardium supplied by the obstructed vessel. Nuclear stress test will tell you which is the region of myocardium that is affected. If there is already significant damage to the myocardium, nuclear stress test will also give an indication on whether the damage is reversible if the blood vessels are opened up with a procedure. The procedure could be either a coronary angioplasty or coronary artery bypass graft surgery. This is known as myocardial viability assessment. A radioactive tracer like technetium (99mTc) sestamibi is injected into a vein and a nuclear scan using a gamma camera is obtained after about 20 minutes. This will show the amount of radioactive tracer in each part of the myocardium at rest. After that those who can walk on a treadmill will be connected with electrodes for monitoring ECG during the test. Treadmill slope and speed are typically increased every three minutes and maximal exercise without chest pain or ECG changes is achieved. This protoco...
Source: Cardiophile MD - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: General Cardiology Source Type: blogs