Stress echocardiogram

[Woodentool]

Hi, I had four stents fitted about four months ago, I had been having lots of palpitations before stents were fitted, thankfully I haven’t had any since stents were fitted. Now I am scheduled for a stress echocardiogram using dobutamine, I’m really worried that this might make the palpitations return!!! I’d be grateful for any help with this please.

[Kristin1812 Heart Star]

I do remember a stress test I had which was a bit uncomfortable, but only for a short time. They were rather pleased they got to scan when my angina was actually happening.

[Woodentool in reply to Kristin1812]

Thank You for your prompt reply. That’s very helpful 🙂

[richard_jw]

The idea of a stress echo is to increase the heart rate to provoke symptoms. They will not increase it beyond a safe level, and symptoms should subside after the test, they certainly did for me. The guy who did the stress echo is a cardiologist in my case. I assume that this is the norm (unlike a standard echocardiogram where they don't stress the heart. )

[Woodentool in reply to richard_jw]

Thank You for the reply, that’s quite reassuring, nice to hear it from people who have actually had it done, Thanks again.

[richard_jw in reply to Woodentool]

It's certainly good that the cardiologist did it in my case. It enabled me to ask loads of questions of him which would have not been possible to ask a technician