Your heart pumps nearly 5 quarts of blood through your body every minute. Even while you are sitting still, your heart beats (expands and contracts) 60 to 80 times each minute. These heartbeats are triggered by electrical impulses that begin in your heart’s natural pacemaker, called the sinoatrial node (SA node). The SA node is [...]
Angina pectoris is a Latin phrase that means “strangling in the chest.” Patients often say that angina is like a squeezing, suffocating, or burning feeling in their chest, but an episode of angina is not a heart attack. Unlike a heart attack, the heart muscle is not damaged forever, and the pain usually goes away [...]
Like standard echocardiography, transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) uses sound waves to produce an image of the heart and to see how it is functioning. But unlike standard echocardiography, the sound waves travel through a tube-like device put in the mouth and passed down the throat into the esophagus. (The esophagus is the tube that connects the [...]
Echocardiography uses sound waves to produce an image of the heart and to see how it is functioning. Stress echocardiography (or stress echo) lets doctors see the wall motion of the heart’s pumping chambers before and after exercise. The test can show if certain areas of the heart muscle are not getting enough oxygen-rich blood. [...]
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a scan that uses information about the energy of certain elements in your body to show whether parts of the heart muscle are alive and working. A PET scan can also show if your heart is getting enough blood to keep the muscle healthy. A PET scan is very accurate [...]
A nuclear stress test lets doctors see pictures of your heart while you are resting and shortly after you have exercised. The test can give information about the size of the heart’s chambers, how well the heart is pumping blood, and whether the heart has any damaged or dead muscle. Nuclear stress tests can also [...]
Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) or intravascular echocardiography is a combination of echocardiography and a procedure called cardiac catheterization. IVUS uses sound waves to produce an image of the coronary arteries and to see their condition. The sound waves travel through a tube called a catheter. The catheter is threaded through an artery and into your heart. [...]
Holter monitoring gives doctors a constant reading of your heart rate and rhythm over a 24-hour period (or longer). The Holter monitor can record heart rate and rhythm when you feel chest pain or symptoms of an irregular heartbeat (called arrhythmia). Your doctor can then look at the time when you noticed your symptoms. Reading [...]
A gated blood pool scan is a test using radioisotope dye that shows how blood pools in your heart during rest, exercise, or both. The test can tell doctors how well the heart is pumping blood and if it is working harder to make up for one or more blocked arteries. This test is also [...]
Exercise Stress Test An exercise stress test is a common test that doctors use to diagnose coronary artery disease. The test helps doctors see how the heart performs during exercise. You may also hear exercise stress tests called exercise tolerance tests, stress tests, exercise EKGs, or treadmill tests. An exercise stress test may also use [...]