Cardiac Imaging

Heart scans give your care team a clear view of how your heart is built and how well it's working, usually without surgery. That view guides how heart disease is diagnosed, judged and followed over time. At Mediclinic, your scans are read by radiologists and cardiologists and reported to the doctor looking after you.

What is cardiac imaging?

Cardiac imaging is the use of scans to look at the heart and the blood vessels around it. It covers tests such as echocardiography, cardiac CT, cardiac MRI and nuclear scans, which show your heart's structure, its blood supply and how well it's pumping. Radiologists and cardiologists use these pictures to diagnose heart disease, check how serious it is and monitor it over time. The imaging itself guides treatment; it isn't the treatment.

When might you need a heart scan?

Your cardiologist may arrange a heart scan to:

• Find the cause of chest pain, breathlessness or palpitations
• Check how well your heart muscle is pumping
• Look closely at the heart valves
• Check the heart's arteries for narrowing
• Plan for a heart procedure, or check how well it worked
• Keep track of a heart condition you already have

You don't usually arrange a heart scan yourself. Your cardiologist or doctor chooses the scan that fits your symptoms and your heart, arranges it, and uses the results to guide your treatment plan. If you're having a check-up because of risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol or a family history of heart disease, your doctor can advise whether a scan would help.

What to expect

What happens depends on which scan you need. An echocardiogram uses sound waves and is painless, much like the ultrasound used in pregnancy, and usually takes between 15 minutes and an hour. A cardiac CT or MRI means lying still on a bed that moves through the scanner while it takes pictures, sometimes with an injection of dye to show the blood vessels more clearly.

A nuclear scan uses a small amount of a radioactive tracer, given through a vein, which a special camera follows as it moves to your heart. The amount of radiation is small. Whichever scan you have, a specialist reads the images carefully and sends a report to your cardiologist, who talks the results through with you and explains what they mean for your care.

Cardiac imaging at Mediclinic

At Mediclinic City Hospital in Dubai, our Heart and Vascular Centre brings cardiologists, radiologists and heart surgeons together, so your scans and your care are planned by one team. We use ultrasound scans of the heart, including stress and transoesophageal echo, to examine the heart muscle and valves. Cardiac CT shows the coronary arteries and can measure the calcium in them. Cardiac MRI and nuclear scans add detail on the heart muscle and how well blood reaches it. Our radiologists and nuclear medicine physicians report the images and send the results to your cardiologist. You can have cardiac imaging at our hospitals across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Al Ain.