My father (59 years old) has recently had angioplasty done about two
months ago. The original symptoms were chest pains, weakness, shortness
of breath, and dull ache in the back of the head. The catheter tests
confirmed blockage in three of the major arteries (sorry, don’t
remember the names). The baloon procedure then cleaned out the
arteries, placing stents in two of them. My father remained in the
hospital for 5 days waiting for the oral blood thinning medication to
start being effective. Since checking out of the hospital, he’s
changed his diet quite dramatically and has been feeling generally fine,
although he’s had to have the blood-thinning medication dosage increased
several times.
About four days ago, he started having some of the similar symptoms he
had earlier, namely weakness and some chest pain. His cardiologist was
unable to see anything wrong after a routine examination. In his
opinion, the treadmill stress test was to risky, and he want to perform
the catheter test again. Although his doctor makes the procedure sound
almost routine, my father understandably doesn’t really want to go
through it again–especially so soon. Are there any other methods for
determining what may be going on? On your page you mention the nuclear
medicine stress test. What is that and what are the
advantages/disadvantages? Are there other tests that could be performed
to research what may be wrong?
Thank you in advance. Sincerely–
Alex Zeltser