Word: angiograms
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...Thursday, a series of tests, including an angiogram, an electrocardiogram and blood tests, showed no evidence of heart attack or damage to the heart. However, one of the four bypass grafts Clinton received six years ago was completely blocked. Doctors stented one of Clinton's coronary arteries to increase blood flow to the heart...
Things have not gone as Steinard expected. When surgeon Pradeep Chandra scanned Steinard's angiogram last week, he found the artery 90% blocked. "A stent is out of the question," he told Keigans. "Your father is going to need a double bypass, and he needs it immediately." The blood drained from Keigans' face. While she loved their plush hospital suite and the staff had been superb, this was all happening too far from home. Steinard, though, was blunt about his choices. It's either this, he said, or a fatal heart attack back home. The surgery last week was successful...
...lesions or plaques that block the arteries then show up on an X-ray picture called an angiogram. And if you don't consider catheterization real surgery, you don't understand how invasive and delicate an operation it actually is. The process can take anywhere from four to six hours and carries a 1% risk of serious complications, including death, from wayward catheters that can tear the delicate artery walls--which is why doctors don't order it lightly. Yet 20% to 40% of patients who take the risk turn out not to have needed it: they show no significant...
...condition. Some doctors are already starting to use the scans to figure out which of their otherwise healthy-seeming patients need to be taking cholesterol-lowering drugs like statins, and may even be able to decide what to do in marginal cases without having to resort to an invasive angiogram. Patients with a clean scan, on the other hand, can feel confident that they don't need statins or other medication, along with their potential side effects...
...EBCT is not the end of the story. If you get a high calcium count, you will still need an angiogram so your doctor can tell precisely where your arteries are blocked. But EBCTs are spotting a lot of hidden heart disease. Although some insurance companies are reluctant to pay for this new test, its use is growing rapidly, and it may eventually become part of the standard heart work...