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Close to 70% of the human body is fluid, and blood forms the most significant component. The importance of blood in the body is evident as it is responsible for transporting crucial substances necessary for survival, such as oxygen and water, and eliminating waste products like carbon dioxide. For this reason, doctors at TLC Medical Group Inc. perform nuclear stress testing in Port Saint Lucie to monitor cardiovascular health patients and ensure that their hearts are functioning correctly with blood pumping as it should.
What Causes a Faulty Heart?
For your heart to pump blood, it must contract through a process that depends on electrical stimulation resulting from electrolytes moving through ion channels in the cell membrane.
Human beings are a moving species. However, and primarily due to the increase in technological devices such as mobile phones and television, most people choose to live a sedentary lifestyle free of exercise. Still, they prefer to relax on the couch glued to a screen. This practice, coupled with the unhealthy diets many people consume, has resulted in most cardiovascular conditions that strain the ease of performing regular activities.
What Is an ECG Machine?
A 12-lead electrocardiogram device is a diagnostic tool that helps health care practitioners assess the heart’s condition to ensure that it is working correctly to pump blood throughout the body. This device works by measuring heart rate and rhythm. Furthermore, this diagnostic tool calculates the size of heart chambers and measures electrical impulses.
An ECG can detect some conditions, including heart abnormalities, cardiac ischemia, and infarction, that may need pacemaker implantation to correct.
A recording of the electrical activity of the heart is known as an ECG. When your doctor places electrodes on your skin, resulting waveforms give an understanding of your current heart rate. An electrode, as in pacemaker leads, can also help to record electrical activity from the inside of the body.
Types of ECG Waveforms
The principle waveforms that are usually recorded on an ECG include:
- P-wave- Arises from atria depolarization.
- QRS complex- Depolarization of the ventricles.
- T-wave- Repolarization of the ventricles.
- U-wave- Late stages of ventricular repolarization usually seen in slower heart rates.
The repeated alternation of the waveforms mentioned above is known as sinus rhythm, which originates in the sinus node.
What Is a Nuclear Stress Test?
This procedure observes the physical function of your heart during activity through an EKG machine. This non-invasive test involves putting electrodes in your heart and helps confirm the diagnosis of many heart conditions. Physical activity like exercise makes your heart work harder, making any abnormalities more visible during the test. The most common physical activity that most doctors ask patients to perform is walking on a treadmill. A radioactive dye is injected into your blood to make the blood flow through your heart more visible during the procedure. Through nuclear stress tests, your doctor can detect any arterial blockages and dead heart muscle.
Contact TLC Medical Group Inc. to schedule a nuclear stress test to help diagnose your heart condition.
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