How Does a Cardiac Nuclear Stress Test Work?

Nuclear stress testing suffers from an unfortunate name. But even though it might sound a little daunting, the test itself is actually simple and painless. Here’s how it works.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States, accounting for more than 700,000 deaths each year. Early diagnosis and appropriate care are essential for preventing heart disease and its complications, and nuclear stress testing plays a critical role in both.

Florida Heart, Vein, and Vascular Institute is a leading provider of patient-centered cardiac care, using advanced techniques like nuclear stress testing to diagnose and manage heart disease.

In this post, our experienced team explains how this test helps us gather important data we can use to guide your care.

Understanding nuclear stress testing

Stress testing sounds, well, stressful, but in this case, the word “stress” refers to physical stress from exercise and other activity, not emotional anxiety.

The goal of stress testing is to evaluate how your heart and the structures surrounding it respond to the increased physical demands of exercise, like walking on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike.

A nuclear stress test is a special kind of stress test that uses a dye called a tracer. The tracer contains tiny radioactive particles. When we inject the dye into your veins, we can track these particles using diagnostic imaging, enabling us to see the way blood is flowing in and around your heart.

Nuclear stress testing can be very effective in helping us:

Diagnose new heart disease
Evaluate and monitor existing disease
Assess the effectiveness of treatment
Examine the structure of your heart and blood vessels noninvasively

We also use nuclear stress testing to evaluate heart-related symptoms, like shortness of breath or unexplained chest pain.

What happens during a nuclear stress test

Stress tests involve exercising on a bike or treadmill, so you should wear comfortable shoes and clothing.

Before testing, we have you remove your shirt and put on a medical gown. Then, we place sticky electrodes on your skin so we can continually monitor your heart activity using an electrocardiogram (EKG).

We also place an IV in your arm to enable us to deliver the tracer solution. After administering the solution, we capture images of your heart and vessels at rest using diagnostic imaging.

The next stage is the exercise part of the test. You exercise on the treadmill or bike until you reach a target heart rate. We inject a little more tracer solution, then we capture more images of your heart and blood vessels to evaluate how they respond to exercise.

Once your test is complete, you rest for a brief recovery period before leaving for home. There’s no downtime and no residual effects. Soon after testing, your body eliminates the tracer material through its waste system.

Cutting-edge care for your heart

Nuclear stress tests provide invaluable information about your cardiovascular health, helping us provide the treatment you need for optimal heart health.

To learn more about nuclear stress testing or to schedule a cardiac evaluation, book an appointment online or over the phone with our team at Florida Heart, Vein, and Vascular Institute in Zephyrhills, Lakeland, Plant City, and Riverview, Florida, today.