Last MUGA Scan

drawing blood from MJ for the MUGA scan

Mary Jo is doing well today.  She had her final quarterly scheduled MUGA scan by the very pleasant radiology staff at Burnsville Fairview Ridges Hospital yesterday afternoon.  A MUGA scan is performed by drawing a small vile of blood from Mary Jo, attaching a radioactive substance, Technetium 99, to her red blood cells, then injecting the red blood cells back into Mary Jo's bloodstream. Mary Jo is then placed under a special camera (a gamma camera), which is able to detect the low-level radiation being given off by the Technetium-labelled red cells. Since the red blood cells (including those that are radio-labelled) fill the cardiac chambers, the image produced by the gamma camera is essentially an outline of those chambers. With some high tech computer manipulation, the the final product is a movie of the heart beating. Since the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) is an excellent, and the most commonly used, measure of overall cardiac function. The ejection fraction is simply the proportion of blood that is expelled from the ventricle with each heart beat. So, for instance, if the left ventricle ejects 60% of its blood volume with each beat, the LVEF is 0.6. (A normal LVEF is 0.5 or greater.)   Mary Jo had a recorded 70% ejection fraction, which is very good.  Mary Jo's oncologist, Dr Gall also order a full chest x-ray for Mary Jo along with the MUGA scan yesterday.  We expect Dr Gall to give us the results of the chest x-ray during the examination and consultation tomorrow prior to Mary Jo's last and final scheduled Herceptin treatment at Minnesota Oncology.  Quarterly MUGA scan have been performed throughout Mary Jo's chemo therapy (Herceptin) treatments to closely monitor Mary Jo's heart function as Herceptin can cause serious, life threatening damage to a patients heart.  Mary Jo has tolerated the last 52 weeks of Herceptin treatments without any noticeable damage to her heart and is very excited to be getting her last and final treatment of Herceptin tomorrow.

MJ getting her last MUGA scan