Cardiac Stress Testing

A Cardiac Stress Test is a medical test performed by a physician to measure and evaluate blood flow to and from your heart during physical excercise.  The blood flow under "stress" is compared to your blood flow while at rest to evaluate cardiac response.  A cardiac stress test can be used to detect potential heart issues and can also be used to measure a patient's overall physical fitness.

A cardiac stress test is frequently performed on a treadmill or using an IV medication which stimulates excercise.  The patient either walks on a treadmill, or is given IV medication which simulates exercise, while connected to an ECG machine. The level of exercise is increased by 3 minute stages, at progressively increasing difficulty (by speeding up the treadmill, etc.) The patient's symptoms, and blood pressure response are repeatedly checked. When using ECG and Blood Pressure monitoring alone, the test is variously called a Cardiac Stress test, Exercise Stress test, Exercise Treadmill test, Exercise Tolerance test, Stress Test or Exercise ECG test.

If Radioactive Isotopes are also used (commonly, Technetium Tc99m Sestamibi and rarely, Thallium-201), then it is usually called a Nuclear Stress Test. Given the ability to visualize the relative amounts of radioisotope within different regions of the heart muscle, nuclear stress tests are more accurate in detecting regional areas of decreased blood flow to myocardial (heart muscle) cells.

The American Heart Association recommends EKG treadmill testing as the first choice for patients with medium risks of coronary heart disease based on the risk factors of smoking, family history of coronary stenosis, hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol.