The isotope is injected into a vein and absorbed by healthy tissue at a known rate during a certain time period. The radionuclide detector, in this case a gamma scintillation camera, picks up the gamma rays emitted by the isotope.
If the technetium heart scan is normal, no technetium will show up in the heart.
In an abnormal technetium heart scan, hot spots reveal damage to the heart. The larger the hot spots, the poorer the patient's prognosis.
The technetium heart scan is not dangerous. The technetium is completely gone from the body within a few days of the test. The scan itself exposes the patient to about the same amount of radiation as a chest x ray.
The technetium heart scan is used to evaluate the heart after a heart attack. It can confirm that a patient had a heart attack when the symptoms and pain usually associated with a heart attack were not present; identify the size and location.
Two to three hours before the scan, technetium is injected into a vein in the patient's forearm.
This scan is used for the diagnostic of heart diseases.
Pregnant women and those who are breastfeeding should not be exposed to technetium.
The patient can resume normal activities immediately after the test.
it can be done but it depends on the heart and health of the person getting it done
During the study, patients are asked to ingest an egg sandwich containing a radioactive substance (for example, technetium) that can be followed by a special camera. The emptying of the material from the stomach is then followed.
The MUGA scan (MUltiple Gated Acquisition scan) is an extremely useful noninvasive tool for assessing the function of the heart. The MUGA scan produces a moving image of the beating heart, and from this image several important features can be determined about the health of the cardiac ventricles (the heart's major pumping chambers).How is the MUGA scan performed?A MUGA scan is performed by attaching a radioactive substance, Technetium 99, to red blood cells, then injecting the red blood cells into the patient's bloodstream. The patient is then placed under a special camera (a gamma camera), which is able to detect the low-level radiation being given off by the Technetium-labelled red cells. Since the red blood cells (including those that are radio-labelled) fill the cardiac chambers, the image produced by the gamma camera is essentially an outline of those chambers. With some fancy computer manipulation, the the final product is a movie of the heart beating.
Some good reasons to get a nuchal translucency scan done are checking for early signs of downs syndrome or other birth defects in fetus as well as heart defects.