According to Dr. Carl Orringer - if you've never had a coronary calcium scoring test- neither you nor your doctor knows much about your risk for heart disease. The test is a measure of how much calcium has hardened into plaques in your arteries - which Orringer says is a much better way to gauge the disease than by making educated guesses that are often wrong.
ORINGER: In many cases we're treating patients who don't have anything, and that's not good. And we're undertreating patients that have a lot of disease, and that's not good either.
But by using calcium scoring Orringer says he's able to reduce medications for those who don't need them, and treat patients who do more aggressively. He says a surprising number of patients with few risk factors already have significant hardening of the arteries. In fact he says that of the first one thousand patients he screened, 25% were at high risk for heart disease.
ORRINGER: And these are patients you would not have expected to be at risk - at least not at high risk.
Many experts are still skeptical and insurance companies won't yet cover the cost, so Orringer developed a heart disease prevention program that reduces the cost of the test to patients, and is hoping that the data he collects here in Cleveland will convince other heart centers around the country to adopt similar strategies. The Harrington and McLaughlin families have given the hospital 22.6 million dollars to help those goals come to fruition.
HARRINGTON: We have a history of heart disease in our family that prompted us to be interested in this whole program
The families say the new Harrington-McLaughlin Heart Vascular Institute, created by the gift will support University Hospital's current mission for heart disease prevention and help to attract top-tier cardiovascular experts to Cleveland. Gretchen Cuda, 90.3