Tag Archives: stress test

Progress Report ~ Spring 2015

Reversing Heart Disease … How Are We Doing?

“We cannot make good news out of bad practice.” ~Edward R. Murrow

Good News Reverse heart disease progress reportDr. Crandall walked into the exam room, test results in hand, grinned at Bill and said his stress test results were GREAT!–adding less than 2% of his patients score so well on the test.   The nuclear images were all good and Bill’s blood pressure response during the treadmill exercise phase of the test was also good.

Taking a good look at Bill, patting him here and there, he was happy to see him looking so fit, obviously keeping up with his exercise.

It’s a little more than two years now since Bill’s heart attack, and more than a year since Dr. Crandall said he was healthy enough to get off all the medication (he now takes only a baby aspirin and niacin daily).  So this consultation was a big deal for us! It was time to get our report card and see the results from the lifestyle changes we’d put in place more than two years ago.  To take a closer look at Bill’s heart, a nuclear stress test was prescribed (you can read about it here), a heart ultrasound, and advanced lab work. This was his first heart ultrasound.  The ultrasound looks at the structure and the valves of the heart where, in contrast, the stress test looks at the arteries.  So we were very interested! Continue reading Progress Report ~ Spring 2015

Nuclear Stress Test

Bill Goes Nuclear

It’s time to go beyond lab work and see how Bill  is doing with the lifestyle changes we put in place two years ago.  So here we are at the nuclear stress test lab, preparing for a followup with Dr. Crandall.

Nuclear Stress Test MonitorNuclear Stress Test… sounds kind of ominous, doesn’t it?  It goes by a number of different names but this one’s called nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI), and it will be done to assess the health of his heart as well as blood flow to the heart. After injecting a radioactive liquid called a tracer into his bloodstream, a series of heart pictures (32 in Bill’s case) will be taken with a special camera before and then again after exercise while his vessels are dilated to assess blood flow. As Bill’s nurse explained, “blockages don’t dilate.”  In his book, The Simple Heart Cure, Dr. Crandall writes, “the heart lights up like a lantern wherever there’s good blood profusion.  If an area of the heart remains dark, we know that blood isn’t flowing as it should.” Continue reading Nuclear Stress Test