Are There Tests To Predict A Heart Attack?

Factual Questions
1

I was chatting with a coworker and he was having chest pains and his doctor gave him an EKG. Then he still had them so the doc gave him an EKG but he was hooked to a treadmill.

Then the doctor gave him a 48 hour halter monitor, which also came back negative.

So far so good, or so I thought. But he told me, his doctor said, those tests don’t predict anything in the future, they just indicate whether the heart has had damage or is currently running slow or fast.

I wasn’t aware of that.

So are there medical tests than can show if you’re a few month from a heart attack? I’m not talking about risk factors, like being overweight or smoking or high blood pressure or high cholesterol. Obviously those are indicators, but I was thinking more in line of medical tests?

Thanks

2

Those are medical tests. High triglycerides and high homocysteine levels are also correlated with heart disease, but they can’t tell you that you will definitely have a heart attack within a few months or anything - they just put you in a higher risk group.

3

Other than the risk factor testing you already mentioned, the closest thing to a predictive test for heart attack would involve a heart catheterization, in which images are obtained of your coronary arteries by running a catheter in through a peripheral site (usually the groin) and injecting a contrast medium, allowing the physician to evaluate if there are blockages in the coronaries and, if so, how severe those blockages are. However, if the doctor is suggesting a catheterization he is probably pretty sure already that there are some significant blockages.

4

Do we have any medical test for *any *acute condition that can show if you’re a few months away from developing that condition? I don’t think we do. We have predictive signs and symptoms, like those already mentioned, but those simply move you into a risk category based on statistics of other patients’ histories, they don’t say you’ll get X, just that you’re likely (or not) to get X.

5

OK makes sense, so basically with those test he got, since all came back OK, the doctors will look for another cause of his chest pains.

But in other words, you can in theory at least, have all those test, have them come back negative and still have a heart attack a few weeks later?

Perhaps not likely if the tests are negative, but it could happen?

6

Yes, it could happen.

You could have a heart attack in the hospital lobby on your way out to the car after you’ve “passed” all these tests. This is especially likely if you are an overweight male smoker with high triglycerides, but yes it could (and has) happened to people without all these risk factors, too.

Merry Christmas. Hug your kids. You never know when it’s your last chance. :frowning:

7

As someone who has gone through all this let me add:
The ability to diagnose heart disease is currently very, very poor. It took a decade of tests to finally determine that I had a major blockage in one of my coronary arteries. The penultimate test showed that there was something going on, but it took an angiogram to determine what it was.

I had several stress tests, and a Calcium Score (a CAT scan that detects calcified plaque). All were negative. So, the bottom line is - if he is having chest pains, *keep pursuing an answer. *If need be, get an angiogram, which is the “gold standard.” I had a double-bypass at 50 - I probably wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t.