Did you know a patient can have significant heart disease despite a normal stress test?
celebrity-news” target=”_blank”>Comedian Brad Upton recently posted on Facebook<
“heart-health” target=”_blank”>Heart attacks can originate from severe heart artery blockages.< and also want to “push” the heart to see if there are any issues on exertion, but the type or combination of tests are individualized to the patient, according to Cleveland Clinic.
Upton told Fox News that he had a stress test called a myocardial perfusion scan, otherwise known as a nuclear stress test, that also included a treadmill test component to “stress” his heart.
A myocardial perfusion scan utilizes a small amount of radioactive tracer that travels through the bloodstream where the healthy heart muscle eventually absorbs it, while unhealthy parts don’t, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Early research suggests that face masks used to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus are safe to use even during intense exercise, and could help to curb the spread of COVID-19 at indoor gyms.
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For those who can’t run on treadmills, for example because of arthritis, a chemical stress test might be performed instead, Bhatt added.
“In the case of chemical stress tests (the medical term being pharmacological stress testing), a person doesn’t actually exercise, but a chemical is injected to make the heart think it is exercising,” Bhatt explained.
But the cardiologist told Fox News when a stress test is normal even when there is significant heart disease, this is called a “false negative” test.
nutrition-and-fitness in someone with significant coronary artery disease is that heart arteries form a “natural bypass” around the blocked artery or the blocked artery is just too small to be picked up on a stress test, Bhatt added.
“In patients with a normal baseline EKG, many professional society guidelines say to start with an EKG treadmill stress test, but if a physician has a very high suspicion of coronary artery disease or if the baseline EKG is abnormal, then the imaging part may be added,” Bhatt said.
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“There isn’t really any established ‘warranty period’ for a normal stress test, but in general, we like to think it can rule out the presence of any severe coronary artery disease for one year or so. But it is important to remember that even someone with a normal stress test can still have a heart attack. So, whenever there is severe chest discomfort, the right thing to do is to call 911.”
