What are the different types of exercise stress tests?
The most common type of stress test is a simple exercise EKG where you exercise on a treadmill with continuous EKG monitoring and frequent blood pressure monitoring. This is good for patients with a normal resting EKG. Your doctor might order a stress test that uses imaging methods to increase the accuracy of the regular exercise EKG. The two imaging methods used include echocardiography and nuclear imaging. Echocardiography allows visualization of the walls of your heart while nuclear imaging shows the relative blood flow to the different walls of your heart. With both types of stress test, a set of images is obtained at rest and another set after exercise. With stress echocardiography, if you have a significant blockage in a coronary artery, the wall that is supplied by that artery will not be contracting on the ultrasound images obtained immediately after exercise. With a stress test using nuclear imaging, an abnormality is detected when an area of heart muscle appears to have less
