Clinton Heart Disease Reveals Misconceptions about Testing (Page 2)Dr. Harvey Hecht, Director of Preventive Cardiology at NY's Beth Israel Hospital, asserted, "There is no doubt that President Clinton would have been identified as high risk 10 years ago- if he had undergone calcium scanning-and the odds are great that bypass surgery could have been avoided." Dr. Jeffrey Boone, a consultant in preventive cardiology at Colorado Heart & Body Imaging in Denver put it this way: "Clinton's medical team could have known long ago of the presence of his atherosclerotic plaque, determined its causation and easily stabilized the plaque with targeted medications. The EBT heart scan is now available for all for a fairly modest price and should have been part of the Presidential physical exam for at least the past decade!" Stress tests cannot detect early disease, so few cardiologists are surprised that Clinton passed treadmill examinations over the years. As stated by Cedar-Sinai's Dr. Daniel Berman, a leading nuclear stress testing expert, "There are noninvasive tests that can effectively define the presence of coronary artery disease even before a blockage has occurred, such as EBT that detects plaque in the coronary artery wall. In a recent article in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, we found that 56 percent of patients who had normal SPECT scans (an accurate nuclear stress test) had a coronary calcium scan that revealed enough disease to be predictive of high long-term risk for heart attack or death. We can thereby identify patients early for aggressive therapy with diet, exercise, and medications." Office-based estimation of coronary risk is being increasingly challenged. Ohio State Clinical Professor John Rumberger stated, "whereas Framingham models and other formulas work generally well for large populations, physicians need to identify individual risk to either offer reassurance or to apply effective targeted strategies to prevent coronary disease. EBT imaging is an ideal starting point so we can precisely quantify risk." |
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