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What Is Involved In Diagnosing Cardiovascular Heart Disease?

In most cases diagnosing the problem correctly is equal to 50 percent treatment. Once you are able to identify what ails you, it is easy to chalk out a plan to get back to health – provided the disease is curable and it has been detected in time. There are many diseases yet that have no cure – and diagnosing any such disease would at least give you the means to fight it with all that you have.

There are also some diseases which are curable only if they are caught early. This means that in order to give yourself the best chance to fight it, you need to learn about its existence as early as possible. This is why you are recommended to have a yearly or at least a bi-yearly medical check up.

Cardiovascular heart disease falls into the second category of diseases. This can be fatal if left untreated and undiagnosed for too long; however if you catch the cardiovascular heart disease early in most cases it can be nearly reversed.

How Is the Cardiovascular Heart Disease Actually Diagnosed?

There are many ways to test whether you are a candidate for cardiovascular heart disease
or you are already suffering from it. You will find that the doctor would prescribe the following tests for you before giving you his/ her verdict.

The best known of all tests for the cardiovascular heart disease is the ECG. This is taken using a motor driven treadmill and a few electrodes attached to the chest with the help of which the heart rate is monitored for a fixed period. The ECG would be able to show the doctor whether the heart was beating normally or it had malfunctioned at any give time.

This test is reportedly much better in diagnosing the heart problems in men than in women for reasons not fully explained by the present day science. Some studies suggest that the fat and tissues found in women's breasts might be interfering with the accuracy of the recording of the heart beats – hence the discrepancy.

When in doubt, doctors recommend a more sensitive test known as thallium treadmill test. This test would require a certain quantity of thallium (which is a radio-active element) be injected in the veins during the exact last minute of the test. The diagnosis is then made on the basis of how much of this particular element has been absorbed in the blood. This is a very expensive test comparatively – however, its sensitivity and accuracy in identifying the heart problem is as high as 90% - which make is well worth the effort and cost.