Cardiopulmonary Diagnostics

About

Hunt Regional Healthcare offers comprehensive heart and pulmonary testing in both an inpatient and outpatient setting. These tests, performed by our conscientious and highly trained staff, allow us to diagnose patients with asthma, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pneumonia as well as other cardiopulmonary disorders. The heart and pulmonary testing that Hunt Regional Healthcare offers includes:

Performed at our cardiovascular services center, this minimally invasive outpatient procedure allows for imaging of the heart and surrounding chest cavity without a hospital stay. The high-speed, state-of-the-art imaging machine produces 2D Echocardiography (Cardiac Ultrasound), which allows our physicians to diagnose and manage heart disease.

This test allows our physicians to determine how well your heart and lungs function. An arterial line, a catheter placed into an artery that allows continuous blood pressure measurement, is inserted, and blood is drawn from the line. Our staff analyzes that sample to determine how your heart and lungs are working and aid in the diagnosis of pulmonary illnesses such as COPD and asthma.

Simple pulmonary tests allow our staff to measure how well your lungs are taking in and exhaling air, how well oxygen is being transferred into the blood, and how much air your lungs can hold. Patients breathe into a mouthpiece attached to a recording device that measures total lung capacity and the force they exhale after inhaling as deeply as possible. These pulmonary tests can help with the diagnosis of:

  • Asthma
  • Allergies
  • Chronic bronchitis
  • Respiratory infections
  • COPD
  • Lung cancer
  • Lung inflammation

This outpatient test allows for detailed heart monitoring over time, offering advantages over brief, in-office tests. The Holter Monitor, a battery-operated device about the size of a small camera with attached wires and electrodes adhered to the skin, measures continuous heart activity over a period of time designated by our physicians. This type of heart testing allows Hunt Regional physicians to determine if you have a slow, fast, or irregular heartbeat.

This outpatient procedure provides the physicians at Hunt Regional with an ultrasound of the heart and arteries. After you are put under conscious sedation, a tube is passed through your mouth, down your throat, and into the esophagus to take clear images of the heart’s upper chambers. This method offers more detail than a traditional echocardiography. It will allow our physicians to see the size of the heart and the thickness of its walls and diagnose any blood clots.

During this simple heart test, our physicians monitor your echocardiogram (EKG) while you walk on a treadmill, monitoring for any changes that would indicate blockage. For those not capable of walking on a treadmill long enough to perform a Stress Echocardiogram, we can perform a Dobutamine Stress Echocardiogram. During this process, dobutamine is infused through a catheter to increase your heart rate while your EKG is monitored, allowing us to mimic the traditional Stress Echocardiogram.

A cardiac CT scan for coronary calcium is a non-invasive way of identifying the location and extent of calcified plaque in the coronary arteries. Because calcium is a marker of coronary artery disease (CAD), the amount of calcium detected on a cardiac CT scan is a convenient way of evaluating whether you may be at increased risk for heart attack.

The goal of cardiac CT scanning for calcium scoring is to determine if CAD is present and to what extent. The exam takes little time, causes no pain, and does not require an injection of contrast material. No radiation remains in a patient’s body after a CT examination.

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