Hypoxia and Medicine

Can you have a partially blocked artery and ischemia and still have a negative electrocardiogram?

Public Comments

1. An ECG/EKG looks at the electrical impulses of your heart, nothing else. If the heart muscle is still pumping fine even w/the ischemia than an EKG will not see anything out of the ordinary. At that point you would need a heart cath. to determine how badly blocked your arteries are
2. Yes and no. If you are actively experiencing ischemia, then an ECG would almost always show it in some form or another. The problem is that you often are not experiencing ischemia when the ECG is being taken. You usually are lying back, completely at rest. Ischemia will really show up when you stress the heart - make it work harder, thereby increasing the oxygenation demands. There are a variety of stress studies that can be performed to figure all of this out Some involve a treadmill, others are done with chemical stressors if you are unable to walk for instance. Studies done with a treadmill and imagining are pretty good (around 90% certain) to catch ischemia if its there - but not perfect. If your symptoms still sound concerning and you are the right age, gender, and have the right risk factors, a cardiologist may want to go further and do a much more invasive study of an angiogram. I hope this is helpful. Good luck.