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Heart disease is the leading cause of death in India.
The term “heart disease” refers to several types of heart conditions. The most common type is coronary artery disease, which can cause heart attack. Anyone, can develop coronary artery disease. It occurs when a substance called plaque builds up in the arteries. When this happens arteries can narrow over time and reducing blood flow to the heart.
Increasing age, smoking, eating unhealthy foods, not getting enough exercise, high cholesterol, high blood pressure or diabetes can increase risk for heart disease. Anyone above 40 years or having these risk factors should undergo annual cardiac check. Besides Electrocardiogram, Treadmill test, Coronary CT angiography, etc. now a new device called Cardiovascular Cartography (CCG) is available to evaluate cardiac status.
Cardiologists may become increasingly depend to diagnose heart ailments non-invasively with CCG’s 3D map heart flow map. CCG is a technique for early detection of coronary artery disease (CAD) to evaluate the functional status of the heart and plan further treatment.
For CCG test the patient is "wired" to CCG device using electrodes and a highly sensitive transducer while the patient is lying down. If required the test can be repeated after a drug to see effect of mild stress on the heart. CCG can also be used to evaluate a drug’s effect on the heart’s function. Within minutes of giving a tablet of sorbitrate the redistribution of blood flow to the heart muscle is shown by the CCG.
A high-speed computer makes all calculation and result is available within 15 minutes. Such data was earlier not possible through non-invasive methods. The records obtained include details such as the amount of blood pumped for every beat of the heart, pressure, volume and time relationship, relative oxygen demand, and much more.
The CCG heart blood flow map has a positive predictive accuracy of over 90 per cent and a negative accuracy of over 80 per cent in detecting heart disease. Angiography measures the quantity of blockages in the heart’s blood vessels but not the amount of blood reaching the heart muscle. While angiography tells us how much water is flowing in the river, CCG tell us the quantity of blood reaching the fields. What is more important? For the farmer the quantity of water actually reaching his crops is all that matters. He is not concerned with the how much water is there in the river. Blockages in the arteries are not the only factor deciding how much blood reaches the heart muscles. Angiography does not tell us how well the body has compensated itself for the decrease in blood flow caused by the blockages. This compensation attributed to collaterals, pressure changes, etc. is not well assessable with angiography.
This is why we often see patients with 99 percent blocks moving around without chest pain or heart attack. It is gradually being realized that blood flow to the heart muscle is all that matters. It is decreased flow to the heart muscle that causes angina chest pain or heart attack. CCG’s painless mapping of the heart blood flow is an important tool to detect coronary heart disease early, to evaluate extent of disease or to know the effectiveness of a treatment. It is often used to evaluate, plan and study progress of non-invasive, non-surgical treatments such as Artery Clearance, Chelation Therapy, Ozone Therapy, External Counter Pulsation, Extracorporeal Shockwave Myocardial Revascularization.
(SibiaMedicalCentre.com)
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