Identify non-calcified (soft) and calcified
plaques in coronary arteries of otherwise healthy people
with risk factors for coronary artery disease and no
symptoms
Evaluate the cause of chest pain or shortness
of breath including coronary artery disease, aortic aneurysm,
valvular heart disease, pericarditis, pulmonary emboli
and abnormalities of the lung
Assess cardiac risk in patients
undergoing non-cardiac surgery
Evaluate patients with
left bundle branch block
Analyze coronary venous structures
prior to biventricular pacemaker lead placement
Analyze
the pulmonary veins in candidates for atrial fibrillation
ablation.
One common use is identifying patients who unknowingly suffer
from coronary artery disease.
Unless you already suffer from the effects of cardiovascular disease,
it is difficult for your physician to determine whether you suffer from
the asymptomatic, early form of coronary heart disease that will place
you at a higher risk for a heart attack and sudden cardiac death. If we
can better identify patients who have heart disease before symptoms develop,
we will be able to save lives with the earlier introduction of medical
treatments and lifestyle modifications.
There are many reasons why early heart disease
is so difficult to identify.
A cardiac risk factor assessment provides important information
for your physician that allows him/her to approximate your
risk of suffering complications of coronary artery disease. Unfortunately,
it will not define whether or not you as an individual have
coronary artery disease.
Familiar functional tests such as stress
echocardiography and stress myocardial perfusion imaging cannot
identify diseased coronary arteries until a more serious narrowing
(>70%)
has already developed and the disease is in its late phase.
Imaging studies capable of visualizing diseased coronary arteries
until now have been invasive and expensive thus not well suited
for screening for early coronary disease detection.
