It was not invented yesterday. Hundreds of years ago, the most courageous researchers had already gouged out a certain number of human hearts, cracked their knives for calcium in blood vessels and looked at atherosclerotic plaques. It became clear that calcium accompanies atherosclerosis.
Somewhere in the 50s of the last century, using X-rays, they learned to look out for calcium in the coronary arteries of a living person. It quickly became clear that the more calcium there is, the more often heart attacks and other unpleasant events occur.
Now the so-called cardiac scan or coronary calcium counts are done to assess the risk of dying from a heart attack.
This is not for you
It is very important to understand that this thing was not invented for you, but for your cardiologist. Go to a cardiologist and ask him.
Usually, coronary calcium is determined in people over 40 years old who are not particularly worried about anything. The cardiologist must first determine the cardiovascular risk from the tables, and only if the patient's risk is not the lowest, then coronary calcium can be considered.
Since this is a computed tomogram, no one simply irradiates people. Because any idiot could pay and then scan himself eighteen times a week. This scan is no joke. In terms of the amount of radiation, it roughly corresponds to mammography.
And I will repeat it again. If a person is already middle-aged, he does not really complain, but the cardiologist believes that there is a chance in the near time to get a heart attack, then, in addition to all cholesterol checks, this person will also have a coronary scanning.
This is not a coronary angiography, and it will not show the narrowness of the vessels in the heart. Coronary scanning rather shows the aggressive development of atherosclerosis.
That is, the cardiologist found in his patient high cholesterol, smoking and other bad risk factors, and then sent him for a coronary scan and realized that atherosclerosis had already attacked his heart, and his suspicions are confirmed.
Upon leaving this cardiologist, you will not have a diagnosis, but the same risk assessment as after determining blood cholesterol, but now the risk assessment will be more rigorous and frightening. Based on these results, the cardiologist, with a clear conscience, will abandon a powerful preventive treatment.
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