More Screening Could Boost Detection of Heart Disease

A MORE SCREENING COULD BOOST DETECTION OF HEART DISEASE

Research team at the Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas has found that adding non-invasive screening to the panel of tests to detect patients at risk for heart disease increases detection of at-risk patients. Their findings appear in the May 26, 2008 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The recommendations by the Screening for Heart Attack Prevention and Education (SHAPE) task force are a proposed update to the current guidelines, were updated by the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III (NCEP-ATP III) in 2004.

The UT scientists added a screening test for coronary artery calcium to the standard panel of tests. Coronary calcium scans use computerized tomography (CT) to scan the heart and look for calcium deposits and blockages. The risk of coronary heart disease increases with higher calcium scores.

Calcium buildup can lead to atherosclerosis, a metabolic and inflammatory disease that causes plaque to accumulate in the arteries.

Dr. Scott Grundy, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at UT Southwestern and an author on the Archives paper, served as chairman of the NCEP panel which updated the guidelines for the clinical use of cholesterol-lowering medications to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Current NCEP guidelines identify three categories of risk based on a person's likelihood to develop cardiovascular disease (heart attack and stroke) in the near future: high risk, moderately high risk, and lower to moderate risk. High-risk individuals are those who have already had a heart attack; cardiac chest pain (angina); previous angioplasty or bypass surgery; obstructed blood vessels to the arms, legs or brain; diabetes; or a collection of other risk factors that raise the likelihood of having a heart attack in the next 10 years by more than 20 percent.

The proportion of participants identified as not meeting their cholesterol goals increased with age, with the greatest net increase among people ages 55 to 65 years old.

The research was conducted as part of the Dallas Heart Study, a multiethnic, population-based study of more than 6,000 patients in Dallas County designed to examine cardiovascular

Source: Archives of Internal Medicine