When it comes to your heart health and understanding how things are working inside your body in Nyack, Nanuet, Clarkstown, Haverstraw, Rockland County, NY, and the surrounding areas, our team may suggest that you take a nuclear stress test. At Cardiology of Hudson Valley, we prefer to use these non-invasive tests to get a better idea of how your heart muscle is performing. This test provides images of how your blood is moving through your heart muscle, both at rest as well as exercising. The idea is to identify if there are areas in the body that have reduced blood flow or show damage. There are a variety of reasons why this test would be used, and the results provide important information that our cardiologist can use to provide guidance for treatment of specific heart issues as well as overall general health. Contact us today to schedule your nuclear stress test.
Why Use This Over An EKG
Many times, the use of an electrocardiogram, or EKG, is the test of choice in order to see issues with the heart muscle and the electrical stimulation. However, the EKG test is only a continuous graph of electrical impulses. The nuclear stress test provides images of your heart both at rest as well as during exercise. These visuals add another layer of information for our cardiologist to evaluate and determine where problems are happening.
There are two phases of the nuclear stress test. The first phase is for getting images and readouts from your heart when you are at rest. You will have a very small amount of radioactive tracer injected into your blood stream. Once your resting images have been done, you will then perform exercise for a period of time, and then another injection, followed by a second series of images by the special camera.
What Do Nuclear Stress Tests Provide
What can our team tell after having a patient do a nuclear stress test? It can help to identify blocked or restricted blood flow in arteries, it will help evaluate how the heart muscle is performing, helps to provide precise insights for diagnosis, and it helps to guide a personalized treatment plan that is specific to the patient. This is the most comprehensive test that provides a window into how a patient’s heart, arteries, and veins are working for the best outcomes.
Our team utilizes the latest diagnostic and therapeutic technologies in Nyack, Nanuet, Clarkstown, Haverstraw, Rockland County, NY, and the surrounding areas, including the nuclear stress test. Cardiology of Hudson Valley provides complete cardiac care from prevention to recovery. Contact us today to learn more about our diagnostic tests and schedule your appointment.