Muga Scan ~ CHECK!

MUGA scan done! Just one of several tests to complete this week. I'll be glad when this step of the process is behind me. Here's a bit about what the heck a Muga Scan is and my experience, which was pretty uneventful.

Muga Scan: a multigated acquisition scan checks to see if your heart is pumping blood properly. Other names for this test include cardiac blood pooling imaging, nuclear heart scan, nuclear ventriculography, and radionuclide ventriculography. Wow; more cool vocabulary for the day!

Some people with cancer receiving chemotherapy may need to have this test during their cancer treatment. Survivors of childhood cancer who have had radiation therapy to the chest, spine or upper abdomen; a bone marrow/stem cell transplantation, or
 
This test is done to be sure I am up to chemotherapy with Doxorubicin (Adriamycin), which is an anthracycline. Anthracyclines are a type of chemotherapy that can damage the heart and its ability to pump blood to the rest of your body. Because of this, I may also need a MUGA scan as part of my follow-up care. 

A MUGA scan checks for:

• Your heart’s ability to pump blood to the rest of your body
  
• The size of the ventricles (the two lower chambers that hold blood) in the heart
  
• Any abnormal movement of blood through the heart

About the procedure
A MUGA scan is much like a (CT) scan, and is performed by a nuclear medicine or radiology technician. Before my MUGA, a small amount of a radioactive material, called a tracer, was injected into a vein my arm. This material is much like a dye and binds to your red blood cells (blood cells that carry oxygen throughout your body), making it easier to see how blood moves through your heart. After they injected the tracer, the technician put a gamma camera (a special camera that uses gamma rays together with a tracer) above me while I was lying on my back, and took pictures of my heart. AND, I didn't have to wear one of those flimsy tiny gowns. They did it all through my clothes! This part I liked very much.

There was a series of three pictures, each lasting 10 minutes. I really didn't feel a thing other than a cool feeling in my arm when the saline was injected and a weird taste in my mouth at the same time. And I was out of there in an hour!  :-)

During my procedure I was asked to lie on a table beneath the camera, and stickers called electrodes were placed on my chest to monitor my heart’s electrical impulses during the test. The camera, which is about three feet wide, was placed close to my chest.

As the tracer moved through my bloodstream, the gamma camera took pictures to see how well the blood was pumping through me. Three different views were taken, each one took 10 minutes.

Results
Normal results of the MUGA scan mean that your heart is pumping blood efficiently throughout your body. A result of 45% or higher is normal. An abnormal result can mean blockage in an artery, poor pumping function, heart valve disease, or other disorders. If you have an abnormal result, your doctor may decide to switch treatments or give you a different type of chemotherapy.

I will learn the results of my test soon.  :-)


Best part of the day was that then my sister Nancy met me and we went to Sonoma Taqueria for lunch. We had a nice long visit before she headed out to visit a patient on her rounds as Hospice for Memorial Hospital.  It was great to catch up with her. We hope to do that more often since I will be in her neighborhood quite frequently for the next 4 months or more.

Hugs, Debbie... aka the cancer warrior

LIVESTRONG:

I AM STRONG. I AM LOVED. I AM HEALTHY. WE WILL WIN!