How Should I Prepare for a Stress Test?

If you display symptoms of cardiac disease, such as chest pain or shortness of breath, your doctor may order a stress test to determine how well your heart functions under stress, such as during exercise. The test’s results inform us about your symptoms' underlying cause(s) so we can administer prompt and proper treatment.

If you’re undergoing cardiac treatment, we may also use a stress test to evaluate its effectiveness, or we may use it to determine if and when you can return to exercising after a heart attack.

At Heart Vascular & Leg Center, our expert team of board-certified vascular specialists routinely conducts stress tests at our Bakersfield, California, office. Many of our patients have never undergone a stress test before and want to know how to prepare for it — here’s what we tell them.

Why a stress test?

A stress test tells us how well your heart handles its workload. The test pushes the heart to work harder than normal, so it needs to pump more blood to keep up with the activity. If it fails to keep up, we see a lack of blood supply through the arteries leading to the heart. The results also help us understand what kind and level of physical activity is right for you.

Doctors order stress tests to learn about:

• Rate abnormalities (pulse)
• Blood pressure abnormalities (heart’s pumping effectiveness)
• Changes in rhythm (arrhythmias)
• Electrical activity abnormalities (important for effective contractions)

If you develop chest pain or shortness of breath during the test, it may indicate you have carotid artery disease (CAD), a narrowing of or blockage in the arteries that feed the brain. We order additional tests, like a carotid ultrasound, to get more data.

The types of stress tests and how to prepare for them

There are three primary types of stress tests.

1. Exercise stress test

If we order a stress test, it will likely be an exercise stress test, sometimes called a treadmill stress test or a stress EKG. Exercise stresses the heart and increases its rate. The technician places electrodes on your body before you start so they can monitor your heart’s electrical activity during the test.

You spend 15-20 minutes walking on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike. The tech will start you slowly, then increase the speed until you reach a predetermined peak heart rate or until you develop symptoms and need to stop. Throughout the test, we monitor your blood pressure, pulse, and heart’s electrical activity.

There’s no special preparation for this test, but you should wear loose-fitting clothing that’s comfortable for exercise.

2. Medication stress test

If an underlying medical condition prevents you from exercising, we may use medication instead of a treadmill/bike to increase your heart rate. Again, there’s no special preparation necessary, not even loose clothing.

3. Nuclear/PET stress test

Also known as a radionuclide scan, the nuclear test uses a tracer dye injected into your bloodstream that highlights the heart’s structure and blood flow on a positive emission tomography (PET) scan that follows a treadmill/bike test. You undergo a second PET scan when your heart is at rest to compare the results to a baseline.

PET scans are noninvasive and not at all painful. The only preparation is wearing loose-fitting clothing for the exercise part. If we use medication instead of the treadmill, no preparation is needed.

Are you having symptoms of a potential heart condition? Heart Vascular & Leg Center can evaluate you with a stress test and determine the proper course of treatment. To get started, call our office at 661-443-5524 to set up a consultation, or book online today.