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Is there any intervention to do before my heart is damaged?
I have a 661 calcium score. I have never had an event and I recently passed a stress test. My cardiologist tells me that my heart is reasonably healthy for my age (57) but that the plumbing leading to it is a big problem.
I have asked about interventions - lithotripsy, stents, whatever - and she says that because when she listens to my heart and I have no complaints (no chest pain, no numbness, no light-headedness) that she needs a reason to intervene and so far she does not have one.
When I hear that, it sounds to me like, "we need to wait until your heart is damaged before we can stop it from being damaged further." Like, let's wait for a heart attack and, if you survive, we'll look at options.
Just for some history, everyone in my family seems to die from a heart attack at my age or live to almost 100. My mom and dad have both had heart attacks and are in the mid eighties. I had no complaints, as mentioned earlier, but I had high blood pressure and thought because of that history it would be a good idea to get checked out. Thus, the calcium score.
Any advice? Do I have to wait for a heart attack or until I fail a stress test or start having symptoms of a damaged heart?
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@strngr12 I believe scraping plaque in the coronary arteries is rarely used. I believe there are methods to remove coronary artery plaque, but the veins are so small and in such an important area, I believe it's pretty risky. They do it when the calcifications inhibit the stent. I've heard of lots of people getting stents, but never heard of anyone getting calcifications drilled out. They scrape carotid arteries because they are much larger and there is redundancy that can feed the brain.
A stent just compresses soft plaque and helps keep the vein open. Stents can get plaque as well. So there's no real reason to put it in before it's needed. I gather that there aren't problems with blood supply when there is a less than 70%-ish blockage.
Even bypasses have a finite life. Regardless, like everything, they wait until you are in more danger (statistically) from the blockages than the surgery that would address them.
I still kind of wish my cardiologist would give me a treadmill test and/or a CT angiogram periodically. I'd really rather catch a decline in function before it causes symptoms.
I had severe calcification in my RCA that wouldn't break up with angioplasty so I had to go to another hospital with a better equipped cath lab and they did a roto-rooter grinding with a micro-rasp at 150K rpm that weakened the calcium layer sufficiently to expand with plasty and place the stent.
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