My previous posting----Chest pain and so on....

Would an EKG, chest Ex-rays and blood work up for heart enzymes show that a person has blockage in their arteries? These were basic ER tests....

[erijon]

These test won't really show if you have blockages. For that you will need to have a nuclear stress test or a 64 slice CT scan of your heart, the stress test would be better. They take xrays of your heart before and after the stress test with a tracer in your blood so they can see which parts of your heart are getting enough blood supply at rest and at stress. They can tell because the xrays pick up the tracer in the heart muscle itself, no tracer means not enough blood supply which means blocked artery.

The jury is still out on the accuracy of the CT scan plus it is very expensive and some insurance comanies don't want to pay for it, they would rather pay for a stress test. The nuclear stress test has an accuracy rate of about 85% but a negative predictive value of future cardiac events of less than 1% for the next 10 years for a normal test result. The only 100% accurate test is a cath but they have a risk rate of about 3% of complication. Again, most cardiologists won't do one until they have seen an abnormal nuclear stress test first.

Good Luck!

[bip]

Stress test is a good test that would show blockages. You would walk on a tred mill and see any changes.