Using CT Angiography for Heart Disease Screening

A relatively new test has come forth that is designed to detect atherosclerotic heart disease. It is called CT angiography and it has a great deal of pros and cons associated with it. It is a test that can be done by radiologists or cardiologists and there is currently a turf war associated with who should have control over doing these tests. This is a test that is not quite out on the market but is being advertised and plugged at radiology and cardiology conferences all over the world.

The fact is that there will be an intense debate over who owns the equipment that does this test as well as who does the interpretation of the test. Many feel this will eventually fall into the hands of the cardiologists, as is true of other cardiology testing that also uses radiological machines to operate the testing.

CT imaging was first introduced in the 1970s but was not felt to be helpful to cardiologists because it couldn’t image the beating heart in its early stages. When electron beam CT was introduced, cardiologists felt there was more hope in using CT scanning for cardiovascular disease. This was a test that could tell how much calcium was in the blood vessels and a test that could use slices as thin as 3 mm in width.

The test that first was used to screen for heart disease used detectors that moved in a helical motion around the body, getting multiple simultaneous sections at increasingly faster speeds. Slices now have thicknesses of as little as 0.4 mm so that high resolution images can be gotten of the beating heart. It is not a bad test when used without angiography dye and is an even better test when angiogram dye is used to highlight the interior of the arteries within the heart.

The use of CT angiography means that doctors can get a good image of the wall of the heart, including its blood vessels (coronary angiography).