Persantine or Adenosine?
When possible, stress testing involves exercising a patient on either a treadmill or cycle ergometer and monitoring his heart rate, blood pressure and electrocardiographic (ECG) response to increasing exercise intensities. To enhance the diagnostic value of stress testing, patients also undergo myocardial perfusion imaging, also known as a nuclear stress test. For this test, the patient is infused with a radioactive isotope at two separate time points, once at rest prior to the exercise testing and again at the end of the exercise protocol. The isotopes are picked up by the nuclear camera, and abnormalities in blood flow to various regions of the heart can be detected. During exercise, the coronary arteries undergo a process called vasodilation in which the blood vessels enlarge to allow for increased blood flow to reach the heart muscle. In patients with heart disease, the coronary arteries don’t dilate to the same degree as healthy arteries, and therefore increases in blood flow thro
