Cardio Dynamics versus EKG. Which One for You?
Cardio Dynamics Machine Predicts Potential Events
Knowing the difference could could save your life.
One of the tests that we do with our patients that we really want to stress on is the cardio dynamic study. This is the machine that does the cardio dynamic study and how is it different from an EKG? Well you have to look at the report to kind of see the difference. Am EKG is the electrical tracing of the heart that comes out. This EKG only detects previous heart injury. If you had an heart injury it will show, but it will not predict the future and that’s why you hear the story that people coming out of cardiologist office with a normal EKG and then boom, dead of a heart attack right at the door as they’re leaving. The reason is, they had a normal EKG, it says you have no problem prior to the time the EKG was done but it doesn’t predict that how soon an event can happen and it can be as soon as you walked out a cardiologist’s door. That’s kind of it, to me, kind of an inefficient, inadequate study.
What we do therefore is the cardio dynamic study. How’s it different? The cardio dynamic, in addition to the EKG, it gives you the heart rate’s systolic pressure, the diastolic pressure and the mean arterial pressure. That information is available to cardiologists by doing blood pressure. It gives you additional information. It gives you cardio output. How much blood is being pumped out of the heart. It gives you the stroke volume. Each pump, each squeeze, what’s the volume coming out of that heart. Then most importantly to me, systemic vascular resistance. How hard is the heart pumping in order to maintain this pressure against the wall? Resistance is a wall, so a person can have normal blood pressure and have a heart attack. We hear that all the time. Normal blood pressure, had a heart attack. Why? The heart is working so hard to keep that pressure normal and the work load on the heart is so tremendous that a person can have a heart attack.
As you can see on this patient, the blood pressure, I will read it out, you cannot see from there. Systolic 125, diastolic 66. Oh great. Right? I mean somebody has that kind of blood pressure, it’d be “Great. Good. Good health.” No. Look at this. Look at his systemic vascular resistance. It hit the top. It hit the top. Meaning it broke the machine. It went beyond what the machine can tell me what is the maximum resistance. Okay, so that is important to me and that means that this patient has severe arteriosclerosis, thickening of the artery. So severe that it’s creating a lot of resistance.
Imagine that a pipe that is very, very narrow in it’s movement and it’s a plastic pipe that you water your lawn with. Well, the water will shoot very far with this pipe because the pipe, even though it looks big is actually very narrow because of the plaques in that tube, okay. Very severe arteriosclerosis, it tells me that, which an EKG cannot tell and it tells me the left cardio work and that’s getting more scientific. Then again, it’s the work load on the heart. It tells me also that information. That’s why the cardio output test is a test that I like to rely on to predict any cardiovascular events in the future. For this patient, I will say, jokingly, “Hey. Congratulations. You’ve got great systolic pressure, great diastolic pressure. If you get a heart attack as you walk out this door, don’t blame me. I’m predicting that, right now.”