← Return to High CAC Score and Current Status

Discussion

High CAC Score and Current Status

Heart & Blood Health | Last Active: Nov 19 4:06pm | Replies (70)

Comment receiving replies
@mayoconnectuser1

Hi Steveny,

Spoke with Dr Min - and, then asked my cardiologist in writing about using Cleerly. His response:
"The best option is to get your actual CTA and send it to HeartFlow for a measurement of FFR. Cleerly is just determining if you need treatment, but you are already having your risk factors treated. As I previously told you, the presence of calcium makes CTA imaging difficult. HeartFlow is better for determining if any stenting, etc needs to be done."

His response has a better "tone" than previously - maybe because he recognizes I'll just keep leaning into it? 🙂

What do you think about the two products/services - Cleerly vs HeartFlow (https://www.heartflow.com)? There is quite a bit more depth presented in the Professionals pulldown menu.

Jump to this post


Replies to "Hi Steveny, Spoke with Dr Min - and, then asked my cardiologist in writing about using..."

I'm not as familiar with HeartFlow, but i think I did look into it briefly around the time I had the Cleerly analysis done. It looks like it's in the same ballpark as Cleerly, so maybe would provide you with similarly useful info. His comment that Cleerly is only to determine if you need treatment flies in the face of everything I've seen/read/heard. To me, the value of Cleerly is that it provides a benchmark for monitoring progress. With periodic scans, you can see if new plaque is developing (and, if it is, where it is developing). You can also see whether the plaque you have is becoming more calcified. This is the big one to me. I think I mentioned before that my Cleerly test showed that ~2/3 of my plaque is calcified, and the other 1/3 non-calcified, with no low-density soft plaque. Relatively speaking, this seemed encouraging; hopefully when I next get a scan these numbers will be better. The idea is that the denser/more calcified your plaque is, the more stable it is and the lower your event risk is. And Cleerly seems like a good way of measuring/monitoring this. But maybe HeartFlow can give you the same info.

I found the presentation from Matthew Budoff in this Cleerly video valuable and it was the main reason I got the analysis done:
https://cleerlyhealth.com/transforming-cardiac-care/?mtm_campaign=cleerly_tcc-webinar-series