I’m Dr. Anuj Jain (https://www.chihealth.com/nebraskahe.... I'm an invasive cardiologist. I'm going to talk today about coronary calcium scoring.

Traditionally, as a physician, we emphasize on traditional risk factors like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and talk about reducing the risk by controlling all these factors.

They definitely play a big part in heart disease but other tests like coronary calcium score can be used to predict risk of heart attack before any symptom appears.

Coronary calcium score, also call heart scan, can be used to determine if there's a plaque buildup in coronary arteries. Coronary arteries are blood vessels that provide oxygenated blood to heart muscle. When plaque buildup is significant patients can have symptoms of chest pain or a heart attack, but plaque buildup take several years.

Unfortunately, a significant number of patients have no symptoms prior to having a heart attack. Coronary calcium score can help diagnose plaque buildup in patients who do not have symptomsespecially patients who are fifty years or younger.

Calcium scoring is a simple imaging tests and determined low intermediate or high risk for having heart attack in asymptomatic individuals with risk factors. This score can help the physician to decide to be more aggressive in high risk patients and avoid unnecessary intervention in low risk patients. The test is simple it takes about 15 minutes of which the actual test is just two to three minutes.

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