My SO has a history of heart problems in his family. His father died of a heart attack at age 63. I’ve been bugging him to go get his heart checked, and he finally made an appointment to get a new procedure called a “heart scan” done. You can read about it at www.heartscan.com.
Apparantly, there’s some controversy about it. Anyone got the dope on this?
My uncle had one done and then went to his regular heart doctor — HE said, POOH.
It’s new, it can’t hurt you, but getting some of these old duffers to go to any medical care is a step in the right direction.
Maybe he’ll go see a family pract. who’ll send him to a cardiologist.
I think the uncle’s doc POOHed the proceedure because it is new and not done by a cardiologist…
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
OOPS! I’m not a doc, just a person who sometimes pays attention to what’s going on, sometimes doesn’t.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
On four centers in the US? Creepy. Someone try it out.
‘This scan of Donald Peters’ heart took less
than a second to create with the state’s
first electron beam computerized
tomography. Five minutes later, the test
showed no evidence of calcium blockage in
his arteries. But some doctors aren’t sold
on the technique.’
I’ve had a couple of these. There are two…exterior and interior. The first is basically an X-ray and tracer technique. The second is a horrific (but ultimately harmless…) thing where they stick you with an IV, use an agitator to whip a saline solution into billions of little bubbles, which they then inject into a vein. (I always thought that was deadly, but it appears not…)
They then stick an ultrasound thing down your throat (and the sedative does NOT work worth a damn!!) while tracking the progress of these little bubbles through the heart. Apparently they reflect sound better than plain old tissue…
It’s quite effective and the sore throat is gone in a day or two…just really unpleasant to go through!!
Then of course there’s the one where they stick a long tube up an artery in the groin, and…well, I’ve been lucky enough to avoid THAT one…