Cardiologist Questions Chest Pain

Can a stress test show a blockage in my heart?

My cardiologist wants me to have a stress test because of my chest pain, and I'm wondering about what it will actually show. Will this show any blockages in my heart?

4 Answers

CardiologistChestPain
Stress testing does indirectly show if there is a blockage in the heart arteries. There are a variety of stress tests, when you walk on a treadmill, and then have imaging done either with echocardiography or via nuclear imaging. I tell my patients, that it can pick up coronary artery disease but still there are 5-10% chances of being false positive or false negative results.
It's possible. Some stress tests are more sensitive than others. Even a normal stress test doesn't guarantee you have no blockage. Depending on the results, it can help risk-stratify your chest pain.
An exercise stress test, typically a treadmill, can. But it has a high false positive especially in females. Negative tests tend to show that the heart is normal. There are better tests to show blockage: 1. stress echo looking at heart wall motion before and after exercise, 2. Nuclear myocardial perfusion scans - usually done in a hospital. The last 2 tests tend to have an 88% accuracy.

Thanks,

Danelo Cañete, MD
A nuclear cardiac stress test won’t show the actual blockages like an invasive coronary catherization. However, it will show if there is diminished blood flow to the left heart muscle which indirectly reflects a blockage in one of the arteries that supplies blood flow to the heart muscle.