Thanks for sharing! Everyone's diagnosis is different and "stress tests" seem to be the industry standard for revealing data, coupled with other thorough testing that may have already been employed. Your situtaion proves that even "stress tests" can are not as thorough as one might have expected. All the best moving forward. - Tom

Stress tests can tell many things about the heart such as exercise tolerance and recovery,. What they are terrible at is detecting blockages. They consistently don't pick up blockages up to 70%. The best test for overall detection of CVD is the coronary calcium scan. Catheters will show blockages the best, but only in the area they push the catheter. Coronary calcium tests show where and how much where the catheter doesn't go. I had one. petey

What about Lexiscan stress tests.? Are they any good and also echocardiograms? I just got over another a-fib attack,. I took one 50mg of flec- Next day back to see Cardiologist. Ekg.o.k.He said I had a strong heart but the walls are thick ( probably born with it). but has nothing to do with a- fib. He is giving me another echo on Jan 28th. The only thing he has ONLY the one report from Co. My heart is not enlarged! He dislikes medicines to regulate h.r. he goes for rate control and anti coag. Wish I could afford Eliiquis. I am still to take flec as pill in poker if needed. I have extreme anxiety so am going to
see a Therapist on Jan. 2nd. He said to live, be happy and enjoy my life. (easier said than done). He did say no FLEC unless absolutely needed! Thoughts, please.
Christine

Was this the nuclear stress test (the myocardial perfusion test)?

Lexiscan stress tests are for those that can't exercise. It mimics the effect of exercise. I couldn't find anything about it affecting accuracy. But here's the deal on these nuclear stress tests. They can miss blockages up to 70%. Blockages of less than 50% can rupture and cause a heart attack. However, if a person has chest pain, and the test result is positive, the doctor can do more tests and possibly use a catheter to investigate and maybe put in a stent. So for symptoms, it has an important place. Stents don't cure heart disease, they decrease symptoms. For the middle aged male with no symptoms, the test has less value. There are many other things they can assess with a stress test though... like exercise induced afib. petey

Buddy,
Hate to seem stupid but all I know is that I had to fast.(I was in the hospital with bad a-fib and they took me to a room where they monitored me while I ran on. treadmill then took me to a room with a big machine, sort of like a MRI machine. The took pictures of my heart and then came the shot of Lexiscan. I may not be remembering it exactly on order or wits all of it, but after the dye they left me in the room with 2 nurses monitoring from close by.Turned music on and it took a long time. The machine moved all around me. They also gave me a buzzer to pressing case I had any problems. The entire thing took about 3 hours
Have you had one? Hope you are doing well.
Christine

You just never know. I was diagnosed with Afib in Feb 2014. After several stress tests, a small abnormality appeared on the nuclear stress test. Several cardiologists reviewed and were almost sure it was nothing. One doc said he still refused the cardioversion until he was 100% sure so he ordered a cardio cath. Sure enough, a very small, dense 90% blockage in my LAD. Stent was placed. Two cardioversions and one ablation later I am Afib free. I am 50, 5-11 and 185lbs. Never smoked and do not drink. Exercised and played sports my entire life. Work in the field. It can happen to anyone. Afib saved my life.

Afib is always a sign of some other abnormality in our system. Finding it of course is quite another matter. After failed stress tests, I went thru the catheter stint procedure. No stints, no blockage, and no answers. Within 4 years, Afib. To medicate, terminate, limit, abstain or remove, is nothing more than treating symptoms. Yes, the symptoms are sometimes debilitating, however some treatments dont work and can be life threatening. I will never stop questioning the lack of cooperation with allopathic and alternative concerning our welfare with this condition.

@Christine - yes - that sounds like a myocardial perfusion test. It's otherwise knowns as the "nuclear stress test".

I presume you had an IV put in and they inject a radioisotope substance into you twice. The first time is before the resting phase of the test and the second time is while you are on the treadmill or when they give you the Lexiscan (for those who can't exercise).

The test is supposed to measure how well your heart muscles are supplied with blood (myocardial perfusion) - both while resting and while exercising. The scanning machine that rotates around you detects the radioisotope in the blood flowing through your cardiac muscles and yields images that show how well the blood is flowing through the muscles. You get scanned twice - once while resting and once after exercising (or on the Lexiscan) so they can see how your muscles are being supplied with blood under both conditions.

I've had the test, the most recent was 4 months ago. My dr wanted to do this test since I was newly on Flecainide and they wanted to be sure my heart structure was fully healthy before continuing on the Flecainide as Flecainide can introduce new arrhythmias (ventricular tachycardia) in hearts that have other issues. My test was completely normal and I exercised on the treadmill so I'm continuing on a low-dose Flecainide and so far, no afib.

@pbester - very interesting. It's true - healthy lifestyle and eating with faithful exercising is no guarantee of being free of cardiac issues... sometimes afib or blockages just happen...

@pacyetep - I'm not sure exactly to what you refer by "stress test". There are at least two kinds:

1) simple stress test - you just get on the treadmill and they monitor your EKG as they gradually step up the speed/difficulty of the treadmill.

2) nuclear stress test (technically this is called a myocardial perfusion study). This is the same stress test with the treadmill except they inject a radioisotope into you on two occasions - one before resting and one before exercising on the treadmill. After resting and after you get off the treadmill, they put you under the scanner which detects the blood (with the radioisotope) going through the cardiac muscles. A series of images depicting blood flows through your heart muscles are generated.

All of the links on the internet discussing the myocardial perfusion test say it is very effective at finding blockages. Personally, I can't see why it cannot be. The images are quite clear with a fairly high resolution - these are layered (sliced) images, and any blockage causing diminished blood flow somewhere would show up in some of the images.

I passed both of those types with flying colors.

I meant nuclear stress test. The regular one shows even less.

"The nuclear stress test is generally considered to be the most accurate type of stress test. It has a sensitivity of about 81%, meaning that it will miss about 19% of high-grade blockages. (As noted above, it will miss almost all of the blockages that narrow an artery less than about 65%) It has a specificity of about 90%, meaning that 10% of the abnormal nuclear stress tests will turn out not have a significant blockage."

http://www.theplc.net/Cardiac_Stress_Tests.html

Here is the rest of the article relative to stress test accuracy regarding detection of plaque. Believe me, I research to get to the truth. I would rather have the truth then a false sense of security. I have had both type of stress tests. Like I said, they are good for many things, just not detecting plaque below 65%-70%. The coronary calcium test is the closest thing to an accurate test for plaque. I had that too. That and a genetic expression test. Don't ask me to explain that... it is more complicated. There is really no category for middle-aged men called "pass with flying colors". It is more like" how much plaque". One definition of heart disease is plaque blockage of 50% or more (saw that on my test in the legend). I was in the best 20% regarding level of plaque. But I still had a little. I'll post the rest of the relevant EXCERPT from the article in a post below since this is getting too long.

EXCERPT:

A cardiac stress test can be a very useful tool when performed properly and in the right circumstances. But, as a screening test for detecting developing plaque in a coronary artery its usefulness is severely limited. To understand why this is so it is important to understand what a stress test is designed to find versus how heart attacks usually happen.

The major limitation of all cardiac stress tests is that it requires a high level of blockage in one or more coronary arteries to produce an abnormal result. The underlying principle of a stress test is very simple: increase the heart rate, either with exercise or drugs, and look for evidence that a portion of the left ventricle muscle does not get enough additional blood flow to match the increase in demand as the heart rate rises. This will usually require at least a 65% narrowing in one of the arteries on the surface of the heart before the amount of blood flow through that artery can not increase enough to meet the demand and a portion of the muscle begins to starve.

At that point the treatment options are to re-open the artery with a stent or bypass surgery. Either way, the treatment is invasive and the patient has already been at very high risk for a heart attack for many years.

This limitation in stress testing does not depend on what type of stress test is done. An Exercise Treadmill Test looks for changes in the ECG as the heart rate rises. A Stress-Echo Test uses ultrasound to image the heart after exercise to detect portions of the left ventricle that do not move as well as expected because of lack of blood flow. A Nuclear Stress Test uses an injection of Thallium or Technetium radio-isotopes and a gamma-ray camera to image the distribution of blood flow in the heart muscle before and after exercise. All of these techniques still depend upon there being a limitation of blood flow to a portion of the left ventricle. This simply does not occur unless there is a high-grade blockage in the artery.