Coronary Artery Disease – Control & Routine Testing

Transcript

It’s important to see a doctor regularly in order to make sure that you modify your risk factors and are able to control your risk factors. Such as, for example: high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, as well as maintaining a good diet and exercise program. After a little while, your doctor may do testing for CAD. Some routine testing would include an EKG (which would look for both heart arhythmias as well as signs of Ischemia or decreased profusion to your heart.) If this is seen, further follow-up tests can be done. One of these is an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of your heart. This can look at – specifically in coronary artery disease – can look at the wall motion of your heart and make sure that they are all functioning at the level that they should. A wall motion abnormality can be a sign of decreased blood flow to that part of the heart. In addition, a doctor may prescribe a stress test. Now there are several different kinds of stress tests that can be used. If you’re able to walk on a treadmill and your baseline EKG is normal, then the most typical test is an EKG treadmill stress test, in which you walk on a treadmill and the doctor will tell over time as you exercise whether your EKG changes. If it does, it might be a sign that you have coronary artery disease. Another method of stress testing is to do a Stress Echo, which would be with exercise to look at the echocardiogram and see if there are changes in that. Also, a doctor can do another type of stress test in which they inject your body with a tracer, which will cause stress to your heart, and they can look at that tracer on what’s called a nuclear scan to see if there are areas of decreased blood flow to your heart, as well. Lately, there have been developments in newer kinds of imaging such as CT or MRI that can look directly at the arteries of your heart.