nuclear stress test

[rc1975]

hi, i am scheduled for one in 2 weeks. my cardo. sd it takes 3 hrs, why does it take so long? only thing im worried about is the dye they inject in u, isnt that bad for u ?

[Toneman]

RC,

I've had two nuclear stress test and they're not bad at all. The reason it will take 3 hours is that they will take pictures of your heart both after the stress test and again at rest, after a couple of hours. They then compare the amount of tracer uptake to your heart muscle at stress and at rest to find areas that may not be getting enough blood when your heart is stressed due to possible blockages or areas that are not getting any uptake at rest or when stressed due to damaged muscle.

About the dye, most tests are done with a nuclear tracer called Thallium, Myoview or Cardiolite. I read on line that the dose is the equivilent of 40 chest xrays and not at all dangerous.

Good Luck,

Tony

[Pika]

My cardio ordered the "Persantin thallium Test" for me? Does it same as the nuclear stress test? Is anyone allergic to this dye? I allergic to the CT Scan dye so would this test ok for me or not?

rc1975, could you try to remember all the procedures and come back post it here? I'm very scare and I would like to prepare. Could you count altogether how many needles are they poking on you? Let us know how you go with this test? What is the worse part?

Thanks

Pika

[Fathersson]

When I had my nuclear stress test, it was two injections (actually, they put an IV in tha back of my left hand to use throughout the test).

Once the IV was in, there is an injection of a radioactive tracer (most common I think are Technetium Tc99m Sestamibi = tradenames Cardiolite or Myoview, or Thallium-201) - this is a mild gamma emmittor (total radiation dose of the test should be in the same ballpark range as a chest X-Ray). You go off and sit for a bit, to allow the tracer to circulate and accumulate in the heart muscle cells. Then you have pictures taken, which entails lying on a table with a rotating gamma scintillation camera moving around you.

After the resting pictures, you usually wait awhile to let the tracer flush out of your system, then it's on to the treadmill, with ECG leads in place to monitor you. Mine was 13 or 15 minutes (can't remember exactly) and 1 minute before the end, they inject another round of radioactive tracer. You have a bit of a wait, again to let the tracer circulate and deposit in the muscle cells. There is now another round of pictures to get blood delivery to the stressed heart muscle, and that is it.

This site has a good description:
http://www.heartsite.com/html/isotope_stress.html

Different centers may have some differences in the procedure, but it's generally as I describe. Most of the time will be spent waiting for the tracer to circulate, and lying on the camera table (each series of pictures during my test took about 25 minutes for the camera to rotate it's full 180 degrees - actually two camera's opposite eachother on a rotating arm).

[rc1975]

2 questions how do u know if someone is allergice to this dye? and is this test safe?