Nuclear Cardiology
CARDIOLOGY SERVICES
Well, heart disease is not a minor issue as it is the primary cause of death in the western side of the world. Survey says more than 500,000 people die from coronary artery diseases in the United states each year. Along with this dreadfulness, the procedure of treatment and diagnosis of this kind of disease has improved as well. Especially, major changes have been made to these procedures in the last two decades.
Nuclear Cardiology is one of the inventions that has eased the diagnosis process of heart disease. It also works with the disease extent and outcomes prediction in the case of coronary artery diseases.
What is Nuclear Cardiology?
Nuclear Cardiology is a form of general Cardiology that is a subspeciality of normal Cardiology. This form of Cardiology uses modern modalities of medical imaging along with radioactive substances. What Nuclear Cardiology does is assess, identify, and treat different conditions of the heart. To be more specific, this kind of cardiology uses noninvasive techniques in order to evaluate myocardial blood flow and heart pumping function. It also indicates where a heart attack has occurred and the size of the heart attack as well.
What are the techniques of Nuclear Cardiology?
The use of Nuclear Cardiology has significantly increased in the past years. The reason behind this is the expansion of imaging software, hardware, and tracers. Nuclear techniques have a pivotal impact on clinical cardiology in case of improving the outcome of the patient as well.
Nuclear Cardiology is performed with the help of a regular gamma camera where a detector of sodium iodide is installed. A computed tomography of single photon emission which is SPECT is present there as well.
In present days, modern cameras have been used in Nuclear Cardiology which uses cadmium zinc telluride detectors. These new generation cameras have much more resolution along with sensitivity.
SPECT is mostly used in Nuclear Cardiology. But there has been the use of another tomography that is named cardiac positron emission tomography which is PET. Both PET and SPECT cameras are combined with CT that is computed for X-ray tomography. This super combination provides more precise detailed correction. This combination of cameras also makes sure that the coronary anatomy and coronary calcification are evaluated in the same place as myocardial perfusion.
Among these techniques of Nuclear Cardiology, the most used one is myocardial perfusion imaging. Myocardial perfusion imaging is also known as MPI or MPS which is myocardial perfusion scanning. This Nuclear Cardiology procedure demonstrates the heart muscle functions. MPI can assess many heart conditions like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, CAD which is coronary artery disease, and motion abnormalities of the heart wall. The MPI system is able to locate the myocardial infarction locations as well by detecting the lessened resting perfusion.
Another technique like the planer technique which is regular scintigraphy is not used that much. The SPECT is more used in the United states in the case of Nuclear Cardiology. Spect only needs less than ten minutes for imaging with the help of multihead systems. Spect can determine posterior and inferior irregularities as well as infraction areas. The mass of viable and infarcted myocardium and occluded blood vessels can be detected as well by SPECT.
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