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Pastimes : Heart Attacks, Cancer and strokes. Preventative approaches -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dylan murphy who wrote (1093)	8/30/2008 4:20:04 PM
From: jrhana	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 39304

Check out the author of the article: Arthur Agatston, MD Helped invent the concept of using the calcium score for early detection of heart disease and author of The South Beach Diet Message 24689386 BTW you link didn't work. Try this one health.msn.com

To: dylan murphy who wrote (1093)	8/30/2008 7:02:49 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39304

From my TYP forum. This link worked for me It is nice to see the heart scan get such a good favorable piece of publicity here: health.msn.com It was only a few years ago that my doc pretty much said heart scans were useless and not "endorsed" by the professional community. Progress is being made... ***************************************************** jegesq Posted: 8/30/2008 11:26:20 AM Well, it's not like someone who isn't already the largest proponent of heart scanning wrote the piece you cite. After all, there is a reason a coronary calcium score uses what's called the "Agatston scoring" system. It's always nice to see someone like Dr. Agatston summarizing the benefits for laymen, but I'll be more encouraged when I see someone like interventional cardiologist Dr. Steve Nissen (head of the Cleveland Clinic and named by Time as among the 100 most influential people in the world), or Drs. James T. Dove and W. Douglas Weaver, President and President-elect respectively of the American College of Cardiology (both huge proponents of continuing support of interventional cardiology) publicly supporting CT heart scan imaging in a very public way. A lot of strides were made in 2006 when former ACC president Dr. Pamela Douglas publicly urged support for new imaging technology. Sadly, the people who have to be convinced about the benefits are the traditional practitioners who fail to educate themselves about advances in technology and thus fail to see the benefits. Things are changing, but there is still a very large hardcore base of traditionalists who just don't understand, have no motivation to understand. It's great to educate the general public, but unless their doctors are also educated about the potential benefits of imaging (and how those images can help tailor effective treatment) the perception of progress will be pretty misleading. The real question is not what Dr. Agatston is saying, but what is your own doc now saying? You say your doc said a few years ago that it was "useless". Has he/she embraced heart scanning as a part of his/her practice, or does he/she still say they don't see a "need" for you to obtain a CAC score? That's the real test of whether there's movement among traditional clinicians.