Cardiac Health Center

Comprehensive Heart Testing and Care in Your Community

A customized treatment plan for any heart condition begins with a comprehensive and accurate diagnosis. At the Cardiac Health Center at Pottstown Hospital, our tests and scans offer patients and physicians peace of mind and a path forward toward better heart health.

The Cardiac Health Center also provides cardioversion, a procedure that can help restore regular heart rhythm in patients with an abnormal heartbeat, or arrhythmia. Using a high-energy electrical shock (electrical cardioversion) or certain medicines (chemical cardioversion), this procedure can help treat conditions like atrial fibrillation (AFib), supraventricular tachycardias and ventricular tachycardia.

Comprehensive Cardiac Services Close to Home

The Cardiac Health Center at Pottstown Hospital offers the latest cardiac testing technologies to capture the full picture of your current heart health and guide your treatment, including:

• Echocardiogram. This noninvasive ultrasound examines your heart’s valves and chambers and how well they are functioning.
• Electrocardiogram (EKG). This noninvasive test measures the rhythm and electrical activity of the heart using sensors attached to the skin.
• Holter Monitoring. A small, portable device clipped to a patient’s belt or worn under clothes measures and records heart activity over one or several days.
• Multigated Acquisition (MUGA) Scan or Blood Pool Scan. This noninvasive test examines the heart’s pumping function and scans for any ventricle abnormalities using a small amount of injected radioactive tracer and a special camera that creates moving images of the heart.
• Stress Tests. These tests show how the heart works during physical activity.
  • Exercise stress tests involve walking on a treadmill at increasing speed or degree of difficulty while an EKG monitors the heart’s electrical rhythms.
  • Pharmacological stress tests use medicine to mimic the effects of exercise on the heart.
  • Stress echocardiography involves noninvasive ultrasound imaging of the heart when the patient’s heart rate reaches peak levels during an exercise stress test.
• Transesophageal Echocardiography (TEE). If more detailed images of the heart are needed, TEE involves passing an echo transducer (which produces sound waves) attached to a thin tube through the mouth, down the throat, and into the esophagus to create clearer images of the heart’s chambers.