North Cascade Cardiology

Nuclear Cardiology

North Cascade Cardiology's Nuclear Cardiology Department is a fully accredited laboratory with the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Nuclear Medicine Laboratories.

NCC believes that ICANL accreditation is the foundation to create, achieve, and to ensure the highest quality patient care.  The nuclear medicine technologists are all specially trained and focus on listening with respect and providing compassionate care.

When scheduled for a Nuclear Cardiology exam, patients should inquire as to the accreditation status of the facility where their examination will be performed. Patients can rely on accreditation as an indication that the facility where their examination will be performed has proven a commitment to providing quality testing for the diagnosis of heart disorders and disease. Patients can rest assured that accredited facilities have been carefully critiqued on all aspects of their operations considered relevant by medical experts in the field of Nuclear Cardiology.

What is Nuclear Medicine?
Nuclear medicine is a medical specialty that uses safe, painless, and cost-effective techniques both to image the body and treat disease. Nuclear medicine imaging is unique in that it documents organ function and structure, in contrast to diagnostic radiology, which is based upon anatomy. It is a way to gather medical information that may otherwise be unavailable, require surgery, or necessitate more expensive diagnostic tests.

As an integral part of patient care, nuclear medicine is used in the diagnosis, management, treatment, and prevention of serious disease. Nuclear medicine imaging procedures often identify abnormalities very early in the progression of a disease -long before some medical problems are apparent with other diagnostic tests. This early detection allows a disease to be treated early in its course when there may be a more successful prognosis.

Nuclear medicine uses very small amounts of radioactive materials or radiopharmaceuticals to diagnose and treat disease. Radiopharmaceuticals are substances that are attracted to specific organs, bones, or tissues. The radiopharmaceuticals used in nuclear medicine emit gamma rays that can be detected externally by special types of cameras: gamma or PET cameras. These cameras work in conjunction with computers used to form images that provide data and information about the area of body being imaged. The amount of radiation from a nuclear medicine procedure is comparable to that received during a diagnostic x-ray.

Today, nuclear medicine offers procedures that are helpful to a broad span of medical specialties, from pediatrics to cardiology to psychiatry. There are nearly one hundred different nuclear medicine imaging procedures available and not a major organ system which is not imaged by nuclear medicine.

Cardiac Applications:

  • Diagnose Coronary Artery Disease
  • Measure Effectiveness of Bypass Surgery
  • Measure Effectiveness of Therapy for Heart Failure
  • Detect Heart Transplant Rejection
  • Select Patients for Bypass or Angioplasty
  • Identify Patients at High Risk of Heart Attacks going to Surgery for Other Reasons
  • Identify Right Heart Failure
  • Measure Chemotherapy Cardiac Toxicity
  • Evaluate Valvular Heart Disease
  • Identify Shunts and Quantify Them
  • Diagnose and Localize Acute Heart Attacks Before Enzyme Changes

Benefits of Nuclear Medicine
Benefits of Nuclear Medicine Nuclear medicine is a safe, painless, and cost-effective way of gathering information that may otherwise be unavailable or require more expensive and risky diagnostic test. A unique aspect of a nuclear medicine test is its extreme sensitivity to abnormalities in an organ's structure or function. As an integral part of patient care, nuclear medicine is used in the diagnosis, management, treatment and prevention of serious disease. Nuclear medicine imaging procedures often identify abnormalities very early in the progression of a disease --long before some medical problems are apparent with other diagnostic test. This early detection allows a disease to be treated early in its course when there may be a more successful prognosis.

Safety of Nuclear Medicine
Nuclear medicine procedures are among the safest diagnostic imaging exams available. A patient only receives an extremely small amount of a radiopharmaceutical, just enough to provide sufficient diagnostic information. In fact, the amount of radiation from a nuclear medicine procedure is comparable to, or often times less than, that of a diagnostic x-ray.

Although we don't think much about it, everyone is continually exposed to radiation from natural and manmade sources. For most people, natural background radiation from space, rocks, soil, and even carbon and potassium atoms in his or her own body, accounts for 85 percent of their annual exposure. Additional exposure is received from consumer products such as household smoke detectors, color television sets, and luminous dial clocks. The remainder is from x-rays and radioactive materials used for medical diagnosis and therapy. With most nuclear medicine procedures, the patient receives about the same amount of radiation as that acquired in a few months of normal living.

Because of his or her special training, the nuclear medicine physician is able to select the most appropriate examination for the patient's particular medical problem, and thereby avoid any unnecessary radiation exposure.