you get a cat scan for that. the pet scan study is promising, but i m not convinced it s going to change the way we practice. it s a very small study, only about 80 patients and accurate in about 90%. we still have a long way to go for pet scans to come in this field. now, we use pet scan in our field of cancer, for lung ca cancer, for kidney cancer, and it s 50/50 can guess whether there s cancer in the body. for bone imaging, it would work. explain why, doctor. what does it show that a cat scan doesn t? they re using a radio tracer to see where the aggregate of the cells. sometimes with this plaque formation, you would have inflammation. it detects when the plaque ruptures. that s where the plaque starts to go to a blocked artery, heart attack, or go to the brain and cause a stroke. nobody knows the cause of plaque rupture, what we know is 60 million americans suffer from coronary artery disease and any of these studies are important.
aneurysm. you ll get a c.a.t. scan for this. this p.e.t. scan study is promising. but i m not sure it will change the way we practice. it s only about 80 patients in the study. it was accurate in about 90%. we still have a long way to go for p.e.t. scan to come in this field. we use p.e.t. scan in our field for kidney cancers, and 50/50 can guess whether there s a cancer in the body. for bone imaging it would work. what does it show that a c.a.t. scan doesn t? they re seeing where the aggregate of the cells, sometimes with this kind of plaque formation you would have inflammation. it detects where the plaque ruptures. when the rupture happens is when the plaque starts to go and block the artery, heart attack and go to the brain and cause stroeblg. nobody knows the cause of plaque rupture. it s unknown. what we know is 60 million americans suffer from coronary artery disease. what i like is the test that
all the time. c.a.t. scans, we have the angiogram, that shows what blockage you have. c.a.t. scans that tell you if your coronary arteries are getting calcified. we have stress tests. these are what we call noninvasive tests, jamie. now we have a new one still in the works but it s very exciting. they re usie ining p.e.t. scans technology. the imaging from p.e.t. tells you what area of the body is heating up. we want to know if the plaque is heating up in your coronary arteries. if the plaque ruptures, that s when you have a heart attack. this may be important in the next year or two, to tell us, hey, we know you have coronary artery disease, but you re getting ready to have a heart attack. you better get seen by your cardiologist now, you better get in now. or aneurysm? this is not meant for
unconscious? we don t know all the facts here but usually it is something to do with not knowing. you may have a plaque in your coronary artery and then all of a sudden that plaque ruptures or you get a blood clot in there. this is how it happens. then you get an arrhythmia where your heart beats irregularly. then you get sudden death. if you knew you had heart disease and you were taking aspirin and drugs to lower your cholesterol. that decreases the risk of what i described happening dramatically. he may not have known that. same thing with tim russert. tim russert was on a treadmill and the next thing you knew he had a heart attack. that can happen. this is a wakeup call for people that may be at risk, especially middle aged men. if you re overweight, don t know, get checked by your physician. what are underlying problems we can treat? blood pressure, cholesterol, inactivity, obesity, smoking. huge, huge problem. cigar smoking, we don t know how much he actually
coronary artery disease that means he has a buildup of plaque, the stuff that contains cholesterol in his arteries and keeps building up. for some reason, they haven t been able to control it with medications. even after he had the bypass. he has not had a heart attack and a heart attack occurs when that plaque ruptures and causes a complete disruption of the blood flow to the heart. he has had these two procedures which are called revascularization, increasing the blood flow. this is a die gramm of how the accident work, a tube is placed in the heart and the piece of metal is the stent and reopens the arteries, allowing flood flow to resume to the heart. this is such a common procedure, chris, 1 million americans a year get this. there has about a pushback in the death rate of heart disease in the last decades and because of procedures like. this people use toddy of heart disease in their 40s and 50s but