“Why does a stress test use radioactive dye?”
Why exactly does a stress test use radioactive dye? I know that it's supposed to measure blood flow, but how does the dye help?
3 Answers
The use of radioactive dye enhances the sensitivity of the test. In simple words, it has good predictive value to pick up disease. The regular treadmill test is not very accurate, especially in women. Therefore we, rely on imaging in the form of radioactive dye (Tc) commonly used, or echocardiography to increase the yield of detection of coronary artery disease.
The nuclear medicine spreads to the entire body including the heart and allows us to image the heart to see if the patient has a blockage. The effect of it last 24 hours.
A nuclear stress test uses a small amount of a radioactive substance that is similar to potassium that is normally taken up into cardiac muscle. It doesn’t measure blood flow directly, but looks at the heart muscle supplied by a particular coronary artery to determine whether you have a blockage in that vessel. It’s a non-invasive way of determining if you have a significant, flow-obstructing blockage in a coronary artery by looking at the heart muscle supplied by the coronary arteries.
