If you have certain medical symptom such as hypertension, diabetes, rapid or irregular heart beats, and so on, your doctor may request that you take a stress test. Normal heart test such as listening through a stethoscope, taking heart beat and blood pressure, etcetera, cannot detect many heart problems. The reason is that most of these test are given while the patient is at rest. Many problems of the heart and circulatory system only manifest themselves when under stress.
Cardiac stress tests are normally only given to patients meeting certain heart risk criteria. These criteria would be those patients who are most at risk for coronary problems. This includes those with hypertension, diabetes, patients with a family history of heart problems, people who smoke or are overweight are all potential candidates having a cardiac stress test prescribed by their doctor. Also, anyone who has ever had a heart operation, will probably have follow-up cardiac stress tests as well. Should you take one or not? Only your doctor can best determine whether it's a good idea for you.
The thallium stress test is a special kind of cardiac stress test. This test makes use of what is called a scintillation scan to monitor how well the heart functions. The scintillation scan uses a gamma camera for recording in combination with an intravenously administered radioisotope, thallium-201. This isotope is able to spotlight the affected areas surrounding the heart muscle. This lets a doctor identify extremely precisely the regions of the heart which may not be performing well. The supplemental information gained by this scan is huge as well. It shows heart muscle scarring, coronary blockages, lung circulation - just about everything the doctor needs to know to determine if any potential problems are on the horizon.
A scintillation scan can be used while the patient is at rest or while he's in motion. If used when the patient is exercising, it can highlight the heart contractions and expansions letting the doctor see, in real time, which areas of the coronary arteries might not be receiving enough oxygen.
A normal stress test starts by having the patient hooked up to an electrocardiogram machine. The patient may ride a bike or walk on a treadmill. The symptoms monitored for are - changes in blood pressure, breathing rate, and heartbeat rate. The technician will also be on the lookout for signs of angina, or chest pain, as well as irregular heart beats. As the test progresses, the incline of the machine will be slowly raised to force the patient to work a little harder. The stress test will normally last between 15 and 20 minutes - enough time to collect all the pertinent data that the doctor may be interested in.
The blood pressure and heartbeat rate will be measured before and after the stress test as well as the amount of time it takes for both markers to return to their resting rate.
Cardiac stress test are not 100% effective and if you "fail" the test, it does not necessarily mean that you have heart problems. About one out of every ten patients falsely test positive for heart problems. That's why, if the test shows that you have problems, you may be asked to take the test again.
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