I often hear stories of a guy who has a heart attack and come to find out that 95% of a major blood vessel to the heart was clogged.
How is this not picked up earlier during normal exams? Why isn’t it?
Can’t they do radiation shots to see where the blood flows or whatever?
In: Biology
There are two techniques, and both have a somewhat subjective aspect to the analysis.
The less invasive test is to put technicium 144 in your blood and then use a gamma-ray imager to create a 3D plot of your blood vessels. The procedure takes about 90 minutes and is often done in the cardiologist’s office. An expert then examines this plot to see if there is any blockage or pooling. No matter how skilled the expert, every person is different and may or may not have the “textbook” veins and arteries, so there is room for interpretation.
The other procedure is to put a catheter into a vein, generally from your groin but modern techniques can now do it through your wrist. The catheter can be steered as the vein branches. There is a real-time xray (flouroscope) as a die is injected and the dr. determines if the vein is suitable for blood flow. If not, an inflatable stent is inserted while the catheter is in place. At one point the die is injected into your heart and the dr. views the (one) heartbeat action to see if there is any trouble; it’s about 2oz of die delivered by a power-driven syringe. Everything is video taped. This procedure is outpatient but generally in a hospital or 3rd-party cardiology facility, and lasts a little over 4 hours. Go in after lunch, go home for dinner.
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