Pulse Check: Your Guide to 6 Cardiovascular Tests

When you need to get checked for cardiovascular disease, it can feel like navigating a world with its own language. Kunal Patel, MD, imaging cardiologist, Lehigh Valley Heart and Vascular Institute, helps you understand these six common cardiovascular health tests:

Imagine a snapshot of your heart’s electrical activity. That’s your EKG (sometimes called an ECG). During this test, small electrodes attached to your skin will record electrical signals. It’s fast and painless.

A technician will place some gel on the chest and use a handheld probe to take images and videos of the heart. You’ll need to remove your shirt, put on a gown (for women) and lie on your back or side – but that’s about as involved as it gets.

How well does your heart perform under pressure? To find out, you’ll either walk on a treadmill, ride a stationary bike or take a medication that makes your heart work harder. In certain cases, you may also need a nuclear stress test. For this, mild radioactive solution gets injected and helps your heart show up more clearly on images.

This uses X-rays to create a detailed 3D picture of your heart. You’ll lie on a table that slides into a large doughnut-shaped machine. You’ll hear soft buzzing or clicking sounds, and the tech may ask you to hold your breath for a few seconds. The whole scan only takes about 15 minutes.

Your clinician will thread a thin tube through a blood vessel to your heart and inject dye to make the arteries visible on X-ray. (It sounds more daunting than it is. You’ll probably just feel a slight pressure from the tube.)

It’s similar to the CT scan, but this test uses radio waves and magnets instead. You’ll lie inside a large tube, staying still while the machine takes pictures of your heart. It’s a noisy but completely painless process.