Non-Invasive Diagnostics

Echocardiography

Each year, we perform and evaluate over 10,000 echocardiograms covering the full range of heart problems, from common to complex, including:

  • Coronary heart disease
  • Cardiomyopathy
  • Valvular heart disease
  • Adult congenital heart disease
  • Diseases of the aorta

A cardiologist is personally involved with the diagnosis and treatment plan for each patient, attending each test and working closely with our hospital’s surgeons to help guide patients through surgery and follow-up care. This continuity of care for patients ultimately leads to better patient outcomes.

We are fully staffed with full-time, certified technicians, the majority of whom have earned additional certification by the American Society of Echocardiology. We work in state-of-the-art facilities with the most modern equipment, including one of just of few 3-D echocardiograms in the region.

Stress Testing

Our stress testing laboratory is one of the mainstays of our clinical diagnostic programs. Stress testing allows us to stratify risk for patients with coronary disease, to screen healthy individuals for coronary disease, and to examine heart function at rest and during exercise. It also allows us to evaluate exercise capacity, particularly in patients with compromised heart function to establish a quantitative measure of heart related disability and to provide guidance for exercise programs to improve heart function. We also have an active sports cardiology program that provides advanced echo and metabolic exercise testing to determine fitness and performance capabilities in amateur, scholastic and professional athletes. Members of our cardiology staff have many years of experience in the application of exercise testing to management of patients with cardiovascular disease.

Temple has a variety of stress testing available, including:

  • Exercise testing
  • Exercise testing + Nuclear imaging
  • Exercise testing + Echo imaging
  • Metabolic Exercise Testing

Nuclear Imaging

Nuclear cardiac imaging provides one of the most effective means of diagnosing and guiding treatment of coronary artery disease. We perform stress and resting nuclear imaging for evaluation of coronary blood flow, myocardial function and myocardial viability in patients with coronary artery disease and other cardiac conditions. Thallium and Tc-99m sestamibi are used to provide a view of the blood flow into the heart muscle.

We perform the following:

  • MUGA (MUltiple Gated Acquisition) Scan
  • Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
  • Sestamibi Exercise Stress Test
  • Thallium Exercise Stress Test
  • Thallium Pharmacologic Stress Test

The recent addition of our third Gamma camera expands our ability to meet your patients’ needs. Our lab is completely digital, delivering precise images while speeding up processing and communication to physicians. Nuclear imaging, including myocardial perfusion imaging and cardiac function imaging, provides quantitative data concerning right and left ventricular function and regional myocardial perfusion.

The Nuclear Imaging Department is developing two new areas of imaging:

  • Cardiac CT is non-invasive angiography of coronaries with similar resolution to traditional catheterization. It will minimize the number of patients needing to go to the cath lab just for diagnosis.
  • Cardiac MR provides real-time imaging of the heart with the resolution of MR at the speed of ultrasound without the need for breath holding or ECG gating.

To find a non-invasive cardiologist at Temple, please click here.

TOP