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Home » Areas of Practice » Labor Laws » Job Hazards » Heart Attack

Heart Attack Diagnosis

If a person is displaying signs of a heart attack, a doctor will administer various tests after analyzing the patient's history:

  • Electrocardiogram (EKG) -- records the heart's electrical activity and presents it visually in the form of a graph or series of wavy lines on a moving strip of paper or a video screen. This hypersensitive machine helps identify heart abnormalities, disease, and damage by monitoring the heart's tempo and electrical impulses.
  • Blood test -- detects particular markers that are present in the bloodstream after a heart attack, including troponin, myoglobin, creatine phosphokinase (CPK) and creatine kinase MB.

When the patient is stabilized, the physician's assessment of whether that person did suffer a heart attack may not be completed for many days. Testing that could assist with this analysis includes:

  • Radionuclide imaging -- form of nuclear medicine in which safe, tiny quantities of radioactive material called tracers are injected into the body. These tracers are tracked using a gamma camera that produces images of the heart.
  • Heart echocardiogram -- uses sound waves to monitor the structure and capability of the heart. A motion picture of the patient's heart is depicted on a screen so that the doctor can examine the thickness, size, and function of the heart. The screen also shows the movement trends and structure of the four heart valves. A Doppler ultrasound may also be performed during this test to determine the heart's internal blood flow. This uncovers any prospective regurgitation (leakage) or stenosis (constriction) of the heart valves.