Advanced heart tests can give precise results — noninvasively

Advanced cardiac tests can tell noninvasively if heart disease is developing or present. And they can find evidence of a problem earlier than previous tests, while there's time to change the course of the disease's progression.

Using tools like cardiac CT and cardiac MRI, say Dr. Brent Wilson, "we can give a definitive answer noninvasively. Our goal is that the only time you go to a cath lab is when you've been diagnosed and know exactly what you need."

Heart disease and its diagnostic tools will be featured on Saturday's Deseret Morning News/Intermountain Health Hotline. From 10 a.m. to noon, Wilson and Dr. Christopher McGann, both advanced diagnostic cardiologists at LDS Hospital's Cardiac Imaging Center, will take phoned-in questions. The confidential hotline can be reached at 1-800-925-8177.

Wilson says that one-third of the people who go into a cath lab for an invasive diagnostic test learn that they don't need a stent or angiography. "But they've been exposed to many of the risks" created by placing a catheter in the aorta, including bleeding, stroke or damage to the coronary artery.

McGann hails "engineering advances" that have become available this decade which "allow us to image and interpret with processing tools that make it clinically useful." The imaging, adds Wilson, came of age with the advent of the 64-slice CT scanner, which makes it much easier to visualize what's going on in the heart.

Noninvasive computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can define the heart's anatomy, function and how well it is perfused with blood. And they are functional tests, so the diagnostician can see actual blockage extent and the effect on blood flow, something they now sometimes have to estimate to determine what action to take, he says.

He said that patients can get a calcium CT score, which looks at the heart for three to five beats, to see if calcium is present.

The center has decided to offer that test at a special rate, $150, so it's affordable with or without insurance. It also caps what a patient will be expected to pay for diagnostic CT coronary angiography with contrast to look at blood flow, Wilson says.

Which test is better depends on the patient and is a decision that a physician should make.

The coronary calcium test is a screening study, designed to detect early signs of heart disease, before symptoms occur. It's not the right test for someone with chest pains, he says.