Why can’t/don’t doctors regularly check to see if your arteries are majorly clogged?

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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

27 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Invasive testing by shooting dye into the arteries and using X-rays to see it is expensive and not without risk. You can completely injure the blood vessel, cause a stroke, have access site complications, etc. It’s also expensive.

So instead doctors will get non invasive tests like CTs or ultrasounds to see if there is narrowing of the blood vessel. If you are generally unhealthy or a smoker, there is a lower threshold for screening.

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