What is pet scan of the heartbfor?

Test heart function: A heart positron emission tomography (pet) scan is an imaging test using a radioactive substance to look for disease or poor blood flow in the heart. Unlike MRI or ct, which reveal the structure and blood flow to and from organs, a pet scan shows how organs and tissues are working. A heart pet scan can tell if areas of your heart muscle are receiving enough blood, if there is damage, or scarring.

Few different things: Pet is most helpful to evaluate heart perfusion, where the adequacy of blood flow to the myocardium in conjunction with exercise or pharmacologic stress is assessed. Evaluation of heart viability, which identifies chronically ischemic, but viable myocardium is also possible with pet. Finally, in patients with cardiac sarcoidosis pet is useful to assess the extent of disease and treatment response.

Blood Flow: A pet/ct with n13 ammonia allows evaluation of the flow of blood in the cardiac vessels, and is useful in determining if a patient would benefit from a more invasive test, called a cardiac angiogram, to better view suspected vessel narrowings (called stenoses) and possibly treat them with angioplasty and stenting.

Heart metabolism: Heart PET scan with injection of radioisotope can show whether areas of heart muscle receiving enough blood, heart damage or scar tissue in the heart, or build up of abnormal substances in the heart muscle.Unlike MRI and CT, which reveal structure of and blood flow to and from organs, PET scan gives more information about how organs and tissues are working. In other words metabolism of tissue.

Cardiac pet...: Cardiac pet is useful to evaluate is there is ischemia (lack or blood flow and oxygenation) to the heart. It can also detect if there is myocardial scarring (heart attack) and if the wall motion and ejection fraction are normal. It is usually done with ammonia or rubidium pet tracer and pharmacologic stress agent.