Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center

Exercise Stress Lab

A recent generous gift from the Donna Anne Poulack Foundation has allowed the purchase of new state of the art exercise and stress testing equipment.

Exercise testing is a valuable noninvasive tool that we use to identify the child's functional limits, and detect heart and/or lung problems. During an exercise test, ECGs are monitored continuously while your child exercises on our treadmill or stationary bicycle so that we can see the effects of increasing physical effort on his or her heart.

Exercise testing can be used to:

Evaluate the functional effects of a child's congenital heart disease
Evaluate a child's cardiac and pulmonary functional capacity
Assess a child's symptoms and activity-related problems
(fainting, chest pain, arrhythmias, etc.)
Assess a child's aerobic and musculoskeletal conditioning
Make initial risk assessment evaluations for patients with abnormal ECGs showing Wolff-Parkinson-White pattern or a prolonged QT interval
Develop an exercise plan as part of a child's overall care and treatment plan

While the child exercises, we make periodic adjustments to the treadmill or stationary bicycle so that we can monitor changes in heart rate and blood pressure. Additional data such as oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide production and pulse oximetry may be obtained in special cases.

As with all aspects of the Heart Center for Children at the Floating Hospital, the Exercise Stress Lab is in the same convenient co-located area on Floating 3 as our clinic, waiting room, Echo lab, ECG & Holter Lab, Cardiac Catheterization Suite, physician offices, and cardiology administration.