MercyScan: Calcium Scoring to Predict
Risk of Coronary Heart Disease
It sounds like a fortune-teller’s crystal ball: looking inside your heart to predict whether you are at risk of coronary artery disease.
But this is not hocus-pocus. It’s calcium scoring, a new high-tech, non-invasive diagnostic procedure available at Mercy Medical Center. Called the MercyScan, it’s painless and very accurate.
You just put on a hospital gown and lie quietly on a table for a few minutes while an Ultrafast CT (computed tomography) scanner visually “slices” your heart like a loaf of bread and takes a picture of each slice.
“On the 70 to 90 images that result, calcifications (deposits of calcium) appear as white areas,” said Dr. William Neff, a radiologist on the Mercy medical staff.
What does calcium have to do with heart disease? Dr. Neff explained, “Calcium is associated with mature plaque and is a good indicator of plaque burden in the coronary artery.”
Plaque is a fatty substance that may form on the inside of artery walls, reducing and sometimes completely blocking the flow of life-sustaining blood. The result may be angina pectoris (chest pain) or a full-blown heart attack.
Coronary artery disease is the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S. In many cases, its first, last and only symptom is a fatal heart attack.”
That’s why calcium scoring is such an exciting advance. It’s meant to be used with apparently healthy patients who are not having symptoms, but who have some risk factors for coronary artery disease.
Some of these risk factors are a diet high in fat and cholesterol, a sedentary lifestyle with little or no aerobic exercise, smoking of tobacco products, diabetes (especially if poorly controlled), and a family history of heart disease.
By detecting coronary artery disease in its earliest stages calcium scoring gives people a perfect opportunity to interrupt the course of the disease by changing the risk factors they can control.
We now know definitely that very aggressive risk factor modification, which can be directed by the primary care physician, will help to decrease the risk of future cardiac problems for these individuals.
The test is available at Mercy with a physician’s order. Your family physician, internist or cardiologist can help interpret the results and answer your questions.
If you still need more information or want to schedule this test, call 319-398-6338.
