Your Health: What is Coronary Calcium Score?
February was Heart Month—a reminder to spend a little extra time focusing on heart health. Today’s column and the one next week will give an overview of a couple of tests that are often done related to heart health.
One of the many new tests to check one’s risk for having a heart attack, available for about the last 10 years, is the Coronary Calcium Score. We all have a natural curiosity about whether we are “living right” and can expect to remain healthy, or if we need to change the way we live.
The calcium score can give a measurement of how much coronary artery plaque we have. These are the blockages that build up in our coronary arteries that can cause heart attack. It is done by a CT scan, and though it does expose the person to as much radiation as they would get from 50 chest Xrays, or 1 year of natural radiation, it is not a huge amount.
The cost can be from $200 down to FREE (some clinics have “lossleaders” just like grocery stores). The problem is that it provides a number, how much calcium is seen in plaque, and then one has to know what to do with that number, so almost all clinics, even the one that offers it free, still require an order from a physician before doing the test, because someone has to help interpret the result.
Coronary artery plaque builds up gradually over a lifetime, at a speed determined by our genes, our exercise level, blood pressure, cholesterol level, the foods we eat, exposure to cigarette smoke, body weight, and blood sugar, and other factors we don’t know. Plaque has many components, including fat, cholesterol, fibrous tissue (collagen), but eventually collects calcium which is the only part that shows up on X-ray.
The score goes from 0 to up to about 1000, and no one knows exactly what each number means. A score of 100 or below is generally considered to show low risk of heart disease, but numbers above 300 are labelled moderate-risk by some and high-risk by others. Therefore the need to know all your risk factors and have your doctor involved in the decisions.
Most of the clinics that do a Coronary Calcium Score recommend they only be done on men over 45 and women over 55 who have at least one of the above risk factors for heart disease, and they don’t recommend doing it on people who have symptoms of heart disease or such a high risk that they need some other test such as an exercise stress test.
In short, learning to live with health in mind all the time, being aware of what symptoms do indicate heart disease, and maintaining regular contact with a medical care provider to discuss health risks, are more important than looking for the right test.