Stress Nuclear Testing

Stress Thallium testing is a form of a treadmill test that may provide added useful information about your prognosis. A nuclear material is injected into your blood stream while you exercise on the treadmill. The material is safe and medically approved. Similar nuclear materials are used to obtain bone scans, brain scans, thyroid scans etc. The nuclear material is taken up by your heart and is distributed through the heart muscle according to blood flow. Areas of the heart that are supplied by narrowed arteries will have reduced blood flow that will show up on scanning as reduced areas of radioactivity. These techniques are more accurate than routine treadmill testing in finding coronary disease and determining its severity. Scanning agents include Thallium and Sestamibi (MIBI). MIBI scanning has the added advantage of providing information on the pump function of the heart. Both stress and persantine thallium and sestamibi stress tests are useful in excluding falsely abnormal treadmill stress tests and carry 90-95% accuracy.