Hi,
I have to go through TST(I have costochondritis and sometimes it is very
difficult to tell the source/location of the chest pain whether it is
due to costochondritis-from the ribs or the heart). Otherwisw I feel
fine and my resting EKG is also fine.
Are there any side effects or risks in taking TST(I am allergic to
radio-opaque dye) ?
Are there any other tecniques/ways to differentiate costochondritis from
the real chest(heart) pain ?
If anybody has gone through the TST your feedback from your experience
would be very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
cheers
Shrikant
np14015d0-Nilakhe wrote:
> Are there any side effects or risks in taking TST(I am allergic to
> radio-opaque dye) ?
The radio-labelled thallium is not related to radio-opaque dyes so you
should not expect to get a allergic reaction with this form of testing.
> Are there any other tecniques/ways to differentiate costochondritis
> from
> the real chest(heart) pain ?
Relief of your chest pain symptoms with sublingual nitroglycerin might
distinguish heart symptoms from costochondritis symptoms.
—
For answers to similar sci.med/cardiology FAQs, see my webpages.
—
Andrew Chung
Homepage (with answers to sci.med FAQs) at:
http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~achung
Mirrored at:
http://www.emory.edu/WHSC/MED/HTN/~achung/
Mayo Clinic has a new procedure called, "Echo Stress Test". This procedure
is very similar to TST but uses sound waves instead of Thallium to find out
how much blood gets to different parts of the heart muscles. This in effect
shows if there are any narrowing of the three main arteries. They believe
this test is about 90% to 95% accurate (which is the same accuracy rate of
TST).
They do an echo before the exersice, and one right after the exersice. It
takes about 20 minutes and I am told is much cheaper and less invasive than
TST.
Sam
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -
np14015d0-Nilakhe wrote:
> Hi,
> I have to go through TST(I have costochondritis and sometimes it is very
> difficult to tell the source/location of the chest pain whether it is
> due to costochondritis-from the ribs or the heart). Otherwisw I feel
> fine and my resting EKG is also fine.
> Are there any side effects or risks in taking TST(I am allergic to
> radio-opaque dye) ?
> Are there any other tecniques/ways to differentiate costochondritis from
> the real chest(heart) pain ?
> If anybody has gone through the TST your feedback from your experience
> would be very much appreciated.
> Thanks in advance,
> cheers
> Shrikant
My wife had a TST the first week of Sep, this year. I was with her
during the treadmill part which tired her, but otherwise, presented no
problems. The X-Ray portion was a ‘piece of cake’. Afterward, we ate
lunch, shopped for a while and returned to the hospital for the second
set of x-rays, another ‘piece of cake’. She is not allergic to any of
the ingredients used with the iv that put the thalium in her system. [do
they use dyes?]. She has had costochondritis in the past, getting gold
shots for several years back in the 1970s. So, we have sympathy for
your situation. Hope this help!
—
KOKO [ Keep on keeping on ] Hop