Hypoxia and Medicine

My positive thallium test showed ischemia, do I need an angioplasty or just aspoiring and stanins?

Public Comments

1. THe cardiologist that did your thallium should tell you and your family doctor what should be done. Call the cardiologist and ask to talk with them.
2. Well, depends on if you have symptoms and how are aggressive you are. If it were me and I work in the field, I would definitely have an angiogram done as is recommended with virtually all positive stress tests unless the patient refuses. The stress testing is more of a screening test. The angioGRAM is considered the gold standard of diagnosis as stress-testing has inherent false positives and false negatives. It mainly tries to weed out people who may have unknown coronary artery disease. The angiogram is much more expensive and invasive and so when people come in with chest pain. You dont pull out the expensive bigguns of angiogram testing. an angiogram is an xray test of iodine contrast filling the arteries of your heart whereby narrowings can be seen. Stress testing looks at muscle being fed by the arteries and INDIRECTLY infers there might be a problem with the plumbing but cant actually see the plumbing. The only way to determine if you need medication therapy, a stent or open heart surgery is to determine the size, location and severity of blockages as their could be multiple blockages or just one very mild blockage or a false positive of no significant blockages. Only the angiogram will tell you the course of treatment necessary. Of course, some people are not interested in that, so one could always opt for medication therapy alone. Although, I sure as hell wouldnt do that and would definitely want to know if I have one foot on a banana peel. Now you mention angioplasty, that is different that an angiogram although can be performed at the same time following the angiogram. Angiogram is simply the diagnostic portion of the test with catheter squirting iodine in your heart arteries while an xray movie of it is performed. Them they look for narrowings and if appropriate and consent has been given. They can fix it while you are there, so its exploratory. The angioplasty is when you actually fix it by blowing up a ballon that uses a scaffolding to prop the artery open again. Deflate the balloon and that's it in a very basic manner. Whether you need the "Fix it" angioplasty can only be determined by the angiogram. Some have more severe disease located that would be too risky to try and fix with a simple stent and they are referred for open heart surgery. Most would be prefer the angioplasty. Other times, people have flunked a stress test and they turn to have perfectly clean arteries and they get a clean bill of health. If you have very small blockages, they may well not intervene and aggressively treat you with statins, ace inhibitors, aspirin and betablockers. The four drugs that prevent heart attacks. Good luck, but flunking a stress test screening GENERALLY is just the beginning of the process.