"What is a "CT Heart Scan" ?"
It’s a fast, accurate and safe
Cardiac CT scanning is a fast, non-invasive CT imaging scan that provides you with a complete and accurate assessment of the coronary arteries of your heart. It’s a fast, accurate and safe way to exclude the presence of coronary artery disease or provide you with the earliest possible evidence of coronary artery disease (CAD). This is the term given to atherosclerosis, a hardening of the coronary arteries as a result of a build-up of plaque inside the artery wall. Cardiac CT scanning combines the expertise and knowledge of a Radiologist and a Cardiologist working as a specialist team.
How Cardiac CT Scanning Works
The latest technology allows doctors and specialists to see what previously could not be seen. Cardiac CT scanning uses a fast CT scanner to take a series of cross-section X-Ray pictures of your heart. These individual X-Rays are then combined to create a complete 3D picture of your heart and all its arteries. From a Cardiologist and Radiologist’s perspective, viewing this 3D picture is like seeing inside your body.
A key element to any new approach to primary prevention and risk assessment is the availability of, and accessibility to, imaging the coronary arteries using CT scanning. This is a non-invasive, safe way to evaluate the build-up of cholesterol, or atheroma, to give an indication of the health of the coronary arteries in an asymptomatic person. Central to this, we must understand that a build-up of cholesterol within the arteries generally leads to associated deposits of calcium in the artery, so that calcium can be used as an indicator of plaque build-up.