Kin Wong, MD Speaks About Cardiac Nuclear Medicine Video Transcript

Cardiac Nuclear Medicine is a functional imaging test that really evaluates for heart disease.  The test can help detect coronary artery disease.  It’s basically looking for  enameling (?) or blockages to the blood vessels that supply the heart.  Most patients that come through for this test will usually present either with chest pain or shortness of breath or sometimes they might go to a doctor’s office and have an abnormal EKG and they want to work that up further so they’ll get an imaging test.  This is a noninvasive test as opposed to a cardiac catheterization where they would have to put in a catheter to look at the blood vessel.  So for this test were looking at the function of the heart and it’s a noninvasive way to detect whether you might have coronary artery disease and often time if this test comes back abnormal many patients will then precede with a cardiac catheterization as the next step.

The entire test can take anywhere from 4 to 6 hours.  There are multiple parts to the test.  We look at the heart at rest and also when it is at stress, so that’s why it takes so long.

So the only preparation for the test is typically that we don’t want you to have anything to eat or drink for at least six hours, or oftentimes just after midnight when you go to sleep.  We also ask you to avoid any caffeinated foods and drinks for at least 24 hours before these tests.  So, after you come here, typically we’ll have an IV in you to inject the radio tracer material that we will give you for the test.

For the first part of the tests, we will look at the heart when it is at rest.  We’ll give you an injection of the radioactive material.  We’ll have you wait, typically 45 minutes to an hour, and then we have you lie on a table underneath the camera for about 20 minutes to take the pictures of the heart when it is at rest.  Then for the next part of the test we will have you come back at a designated time for the stress portion of this test.  Now the stress can be done a couple of different ways.  We can have you walk on a treadmill to get your heart rate up, and that’s one way to stress the heart, or we can give you a chemical or a medicine to stress the heart, basically it dilates the blood vessels in the heart to stress it.  And then we give you a another injection of the same radio tracer material and then we’ll have you wait another 45 minutes to an hour again and then we’ll put you underneath the camera for another 20 minutes for another set of pictures and then we process all the images and then somebody will interpret them and then the report will then go to your doctor.  It’s a very noninvasive painless test, very little side effects.  Most patients tolerate the test very well and typically if you have no symptoms at the end of the exam you get to go home.  There are no restrictions after that.

We want this test done at Miami Valley Hospital because we have a lot of experience with this procedure and our equipment is kind of the state of the art -- the latest up to date equipment and we have a very friendly environment.  The technologists will walk you through the entire exam and most patients have a very pleasant experience.