Nuclear Stress test results! I made it!!

For those of you that have answered my frantic posts the past few days...thank you! I had my stress test yesterday...and I did ok. Wasnt as bad as I was expecting! And the scan afterwards, was nothing at all! My cardio just called me with the results. He said I have ONE "abnormality"....that it was a small one. NOT a large one. He said my ejection fraction was fine.. 59...please somebody..what is that? And what is a normal ef? Anyways..he said we can go either way...either give me a chance to work on risk factors--(said my age is in my favor..im 48 and female)... starting cholesterol meds ( did that last night..Crestor...) and lose weight. OR...go right into Card cath. I opted to work on risk factors..all the while keeping close attention on my chest "discomfort"...I have to let him know right away if it gets worse..etc... Sooo..I am breathing sighs of relief all day... I have..one more chance to try to fix things...exercising has to become my top priority...and that will be tough...Im overweight and pretty much sedentary...but I am determined to do this!!!!
I have one other question--based on the results...and the fact that he told me I most definatly DO have plaque in some arteries...if someone was to ask me if I have "heart disease"..... how do I answer??? Do I? I havent had a heart attack..or anything like that...so..technically...do I consider myself to have heart disease?

[MarkDuane]

In Dec. 03 and again in Nov. 05 I had full Nuclear Stress tests with scans - both of which I passed cleanly. On both a Cardiologist read the results and declared "no blockage." But various activity continued in my upper chest area and left arm. After angina began to hit on the summer of 07 during exercise, I finally had a cath test which disclosed blockage of 70% 70% 90% of the three main. I quickly had a quintuple bypass (he found more blockage inside). To this day I remain puzzled about the first two stress tests - did two different Cardiologists miss actual blockage, or did all that blockage build in just a year and a half? (Probably not) All this to say that from my experience I question the accuracy of the stress test. -Remain very acute with symptoms and tight with your doctor about it. Definitely take the prescribed lifestyle change serious.

[Flycaster305]

Glad you made it through fine.  Do stay on top of the angina symptoms.  Keep in mind diet, exercise and medication will not reduce the size of blockages that may now exist, but they will aid in the formation of collateral blood vessels which may take over for the existing blocked vessels.  Hope that makes sense.  Remember, the narrowing of the blood vessel may be due to a layer of plaque in the artery, but the blockage forms when that plaque erupts and a blood clot forms, that is why, MarkDuane, blockages can occur in a New York Minute.  My blockages came in clusters, I had eight within about an eighteen month segment.  They didn't miss them as they had to run the wire and stent through the areas that subsequently blocked.
The Ejection Fraction (EF) is the rating of the efficiency of the heart.  Normal is 50 - 70% to most Cardiologists, I think. Regarding the diagnosis of "Heart Disease"... Stress tests are generally pretty accurate, they have indicated where all my blockages were before the angiograms.  Your doctor sounds sure you have narrowed arteries, so you probably do have Cardiac Artery Disease.  However, you haven't had the 'gold standard' of proof, the angiogram, so if it were me, I'd never write down when applying for new health insurance you have it as it hasn't been proven.  That being said, I suggest you keep it in your head that you probably do as an incentive to exercise.  Good for you, going through the stress test.  They are a piece of cake, aren't they?

[erijon]

Congrats! Now, was it really as bad as you thought it would be? Seriously, this is good news. You do want to stay on top of you symptoms, but this is a good place to start. Don't you feel better now that you know? Isn't better than the constant worry? The accuracy of a nuclear stress test is 85% but the specificity is 97% meaning that they find significant CAD 97% of the time in individuals with CAD.

Do as your doctor suggests and you will do great!

Jon