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| New Life-saving Heart Examination |
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| Unlike earlier heart scans, CT Angiography (CTA) can image soft plaque inside the arteries in addition to calcified plaque and the narrowing arteries that show the first signs of developing heart disease. When these factors are identified, patients have many options for non-surgical and surgical treatments. They also have the opportunity to improve heart health by changing lifestyle and diet. | ||||
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| Our newest CT equipment allows us to image the arteries of the heart so clearly we are able to see any blockages due to the build up of soft fatty deposits called soft plaque. This is achieved with a very low dose of radiation, just 4.5 times greater the dose usually associated with full-mouth dental X-rays. Using the millirems as the unit of measure a dental X-ray is 52 compared to 235 for the CT Angiogram. That's less than one quarter the exposure for most other CT examinations. Earlier CT equipment showed calcium deposits called hard plaque also associated with heart artery blockages, but was not able to image soft plaque sometimes associated with early stage development of blockages in the arteries of the heart. | ||||
| In many cases, heart attacks don't signal their arrival with chest pain or other symptoms you or your doctor might notice. That's why it is so important to know as much as possible about the health of your heart if you have the following risk factors: |
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Family History of Heart Attack Advanced Age Excessive Stress Factors in Your Life Over Weight Smoking Tobacco High Cholesterol High Blood Pressure Diabetes Higher Than Moderate Consumption of Alcohol |
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Now, there is a powerful new way to determine if any of these risk factors are causing coronary heart disease. |
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It's important to remember that this procedure is not for all heart patients. If your doctor notices active symptoms of heart disease, you will most likely be sent to the hospital for a full-catheter Angiogram procedure. For those with risk factors (and no symptoms), the Coronary CTA Examination* offers the most powerful and accurate alternative to the Angiogram procedure. CTA is extremely valuable when you consider that for one-third of heart disease sufferers, the first symptom of heart trouble is dying of a heart attack. Clearly, the ability to find and treat these problems, can and does save lives. There is a great need for a non-invasive and safe way to identify heart trouble from those who are at risk but free of symptoms. In some heart patients, the Coronary CTA Examination may also be a better alternative to the full-catheter Angiogram procedure. These situations include the evaluation of grafts and stents from prior surgical procedures, patients with certain heart artery abnormalities, and certain high-risk surgical patients such as patients who have received heart valve replacements. Your doctor will determine which procedure is best for you. |
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| The CTA Procedure |
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Patients receiving the CTA exam are asked to avoid eating and to drink only water before the procedure. Upon arrival, the patient will be asked to remove any metal objects from clothing worn into the examination room. All patients will be asked if they have any allergies. This helps avoid an allergic reaction to contrast material. A physician or nurse will then administer a medication to slow the heart rate to 60 beats per minute and place an IV into a peripheral vein, usually in the patients forearm. The patient is then brought to the CT scanner. Before the exam, a dose of contrast agent is administered into the IV. In some patients, additional medication will be added through the IV to bring the heart rate to the proper level for the exam. This ensures that the arteries will stand out when the radiologist reads the scan and writes the report. The patient will then lay down on the CT table, and the scan will begin. During the CT scan, the scanner will rotate around the patient and take a large number of x-ray images. These x-ray images are then sent to a computer. Because the x-ray images are taken from a variety of angles, the computer is able to put them together and create a 3-dimensional image of the patient. Unlike a traditional X-ray, which is taken in only 2-dimensions, this allows the physician to look at the arteries and other organs in the body from essentially any direction, which is extremely valuable in diagnosing disease. Today's CT scanners use multiple detectors to capture images from each rotation of the CT scanner. The top machines use up to 64 detectors, and are also known as "64-slice" scanners. For the patient, this means that the scan time is very short, and may be completed in as little as 10 seconds. For the physician, this provides a high level of detail that was previously unavailable. During a heart scan, this is very important because the arteries of the heart are small and the heart continues to move during the exam. Therefore, the best coronary angiograms are completed using multidetector scanners. |
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