Coronary artery disease can be visualized through two main methods:

• Conventional Coronary Angiography (CAG) is the gold standard for detecting coronary artery disease. It delivers the most accurate result, leading to proper treatments such as percutaneous transluminal coronary intervention.

  However, such examination sometimes cause complications like bleeding at the point where the cathether is inserted, cuts in the blood vessel wall, or stroke. Such risk is minimal at the hands of qualified specialists but some risk still remains because CAG requires that a catheter be inserted into the body of a patient around his or her groin and pushed to the coronary arteries.

  In addition, CAG is quite costly and generally requires the patient to recuperate at the hospital for 24 hours after the procedure.

• In the beginning, computerized tomography scanners for coronary artery diseases had problems because they could not produce resolution high enough for imaging. This limitation restricted the medical team’s ability to interpret the findings from their examinations and to make a diagnosis.

  However, that problem was resolved when X-ray scanner technology advanced. Scanners generating 16 slices or more are now very efficient in examining heart conditions of a patient, giving accurate and detailed results.

  Many medical researches have found that the MDCT (multi-detector CT) is more than 90 percent accurate in detecting coronary artery disease. Research has also shown that MDCT results are 97 percent successful for detecting normal coronary arteries.

  Presently, the technology has become so advanced that high-tech CT scanners with 40-64 slices are now available. These scanners can conduct the examination and capture the images of coronary artery vessels within 10-15 seconds. These images also have very high resolution.

  Another big advantage is that the patient can return home immediately after MDCT check-up. For these reasons, MDCT is now a popular method for heart-function examination and plays a vital role in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease.

Who should have the MDCT examination?

• Patients who have the risks of coronary artery disease such as:
  • Hyperlipidemia;
  • Diabetes mellitus;
  • Hypertension;
  • Heavy smokers; and
  • People with a history of coronary artery disease within their family.
• Patients who are suspected of having coronary artery diseases. For example, persons who have:
  • Chest pain; and/or
  • Abnormal Exercise Stress Test results;
• Patients who have undergone percutaneous transluminal coronary intervention (PTCI) or coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) and have to undergo on examination to check their treatment results or current symptoms

An MDCT examination requires that a contrast medium be injected into the patients’ veins. We advise against it for patients with:

• severe asthma;
• cardiomyopathy;
• a high level of creatinine or chronic kidney failure; or
• a history of severe allergy to seafood or contrast medium from X-ray examinations

In addition to its efficiency in checking for coronary artery diseases, MDCT is also very useful inidentifying other diseases by means of a screening check-up. People who do not have any symptoms but are among high risk groups for any particular disease can have their doctor use MDCT for a screening check-up.

Good candidates for an MDCT screening check-up include:

• smokers to find out if they have an occult lung cancer;
• patients who have been injured in accidents to examine lesions;
• persons who suffer from brain diseases sinusitis, nodules, inflammatory lung or abdomen, or vascular diseases;
• persons who concerned about abnormalities in main arteries such as the dilated or torn blood vessels; and
• persons concerned about their amount of abdominal fat because it relates to coronary calcification and the risk of coronary artery disease.

Piyavate Hospital International Health Care Services Provider has the latest 64-slice MDCT to check and visualize the heart condition in seconds. It delivers results as accurate as conventional coronary angiography but is non-invasive and causes much less risk to patients.