I have a very high calcium score. What next?

Hey thanks! Pretty interesting read, @50% error introduction due to increased hr quite disappointing considering no one effing mentions this when taking the test. Looking to see if the Cleerly test backs up my @900 calcium score, although it seems the calcium wont kill you before the vulnerable plaque will lol.

Grateful to you for the assist on the URL, Colleen---thanks so much!

Pete

@santafepete, welcome. I noticed that you wished to post a URL to a research paper with your post. You will be able to add URLs to your posts in a few days. There is a brief period where new members can't post links. We do this to deter spammers and keep the community safe. Clearly the link you wanted to post is not spam. Please allow me to post it for you.

- Influence of heart rate on coronary calcium scores: a multi-manufacturer phantom study (2017) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10554-017-1293-x

My Christmas present this year was receiving the news that my calcium score was 1444 on a routine screen at age 63.

I am actually MAD about getting the score. I was a consulting bio-electrical engineer to NASA a million years ago, and my first gig there was in instrumenting the cardiovascular lab. A lot of the instrumentation that is used for telemetry in hospitals today we built up from parts. I mention this because often times parts lie.

Here is an interesting paper done on calcium scores back in 2017 demonstrating a 50% error rate on some CT systems caused by a heart rate of 75bpm.

Sorry---they will not let me post the URL yet, so I will amend when I get permission, but the title is: Influence of heart rate on coronary calcium scores: a multi-manufacturer phantom study. And it was in the International Journal of Cardiology, 28 Dec 2017.

I dont know about you, but my heart rate was well over 110bpm going into the CT scanner tube. Yet the doctors keep telling me that the machine is 100% accurate with the score. When I provide them with the paper, they look confused, then angry at my mention.

So now I have to do the complete stupid human trick to prove to my doctors that I am 100%. Like many of you, I can imagine when we get to the end of this that the calcium score will have been caused by a secondary occurrence, not inter vascular. In the interim, I am left with the upset of thinking I have a time-bomb in my chest, instead of a heart. Since the news, I am throwing PVCs like crazy, and getting anxiety attacks that should be laughable.

I should mention that I gave up red meat five years ago, am not obese, exercise regularly, and have no family history of heart disease at all.

I am not angry that there is a CT calcium scan test. I am angry that doctors believe these high values like a religion, when to me it seems like an anomaly with the technology as many of you have found out the hard way. When will some one do a meaningful study to show that these super high scores should be viewed with suspicion?

And I remember when gastroenterologists would not accept that H-pylori caused stomach ulcers---complete nonsense! So now, I guess it is cardiology's turn. I think the CT makers are way over stepping what is feasible.

Pete

Hi, I just stumbled across this post from you and am curious if you’ve learned anything more about your situation/gained any new perspective or insight since? I am in a very similar situation - age 42, just found out I have a 397 calcium score, non-smoker, not overweight, exercise and a blood panel that according to a cardiologist actually looks basically fine. He is shocked by my high calcium score.

Anyway, not sure if you will see this, but very curios if you have any updates and hope you are well.

Doing due diligence on the web on anything, yet alone anything medical (or, worsen political) is not for the faint of heart or those, well, less than diligent.

Google Scholar and peer-reviewed studies are a safer neighborhood to wander through. But nothing is foolproof. There are a hundreds of, in a sense, faux medical journals that people pay a lot of money to get published in to pad a resume. (I know someone who whose editorship of one financed has grad school education. I'd never of them before that.)

So caveat emptor remains good advice. But there are actual nuggets of truth out there that might change one's medical choices or decisions. So, no rest for the weary remains the applicable adage in my opinion. I think that I've mixed one too many metaphors with that observation...

If this fb group is the same one I joined - stand by for all sorts of crazy sounding advice - from made up concepts to conspiracy theories. Everything the internet has brought to the news is present.

After pushing back on what I considered to be nutty stuff they terminated my access.

Did you have the Cath Lab test done?

Did you get a Catheterized Angiogram or a CT Angiogram?

Please, someone!
I wrote earlier that my nice but (I suspect) subpar cardiologist told me calcium tests have been proven to be uninformative."

I suspect he's wrong, even if it isn't the end all, be all.
I asked PCP's nurse yesterday about the PCP's ordering me a calcium test for my heart and she said my last metabolic panel showed my calcium level was normal so I didn't have to worry.

Now, I see c/o Dr. Google that in fact, the heart calcium test involves a CT scan or other fancier test! (You see what I mean about my area being "medically underserved? She thought it was a blood test!)

Are there more than one kind of scan or are all CT scans? I gather it helps evaluate levels of plaque (containing calcium),. Having an inherited lipid disorder I really want to know my score.