I often hear stories of a guy who has a heart attack and come to find out that 95% of a major blood vessel to the heart was clogged.
How is this not picked up earlier during normal exams? Why isn’t it?
Can’t they do radiation shots to see where the blood flows or whatever?
In: Biology
This is an excellent question. We do have different exam types to see if arteries are clogged. Each of these examinations carries radiation and operation related risks. The doctors assess the risks before ordering the exam: if the patient already has symptoms, the risks from not doing the examination (possible death) surpass the risks of doing the exam (radiation, infection, etc).
When we are talking about screening healthy patients, the former might not be true. The risks of doing the exam might be greater than the risk for clogged vessels. For a single person, the risks are low. However, if we look at the population level, we start to see the problems. I.e. regularly screened population will have more radiation induced cancer, etc, related to the screening.
Experts in my country have just decided that coronary CT is not justified for regular screening of blood vessels, even when the patient has a burden from family (relatives with heart disease), since at this stage the treatment would be the same anyways: reduce risk factors such as smoking, cholesterol. If the patient is symptomatic, the situation is different.
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