https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/health/coronary-artery-calcium-heart.html

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Health|This Test Can See a Heart Attack in Your Future
  
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/health/
coronary-artery-calcium-heart.html

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the new old age

This Test Can See a Heart Attack in Your Future

Coronary artery calcium testing can reveal plaque in arteries,
offering a more precise estimate of a patient's risk. Yet the test
remains underused.

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[20sci-SPAN-calcium-test-articleLarge]
Credit...Michelle Perez

By Paula Span

July 26, 2025

A long list of Lynda Hollander's paternal relatives had heart
disease, and several had undergone major surgeries. So when she hit
her mid-50s and saw her cholesterol levels creeping up after
menopause, she said, "I didn't want to take a chance."

A cardiologist told Ms. Hollander that based on factors like age,
sex, cholesterol and blood pressure, she faced a moderate risk of a
major cardiac event, like a heart attack, within the next 10 years.

Doctors typically counsel such patients about the importance of diet
and exercise, but Ms. Hollander, now 64, a social worker in West
Orange, N.J., didn't have much room for improvement. She was already
a serious runner, and although "I fall off the wagon once in a
while," her diet was basically healthy. Attempts to lose weight
didn't lower her cholesterol.

Her doctor explained that a coronary artery calcium test, something
Ms. Hollander had never heard of, could provide a more precise
estimate of her risk of atherosclerotic heart disease. A brief and
painless CT scan, it would show whether the fatty deposits called
plaque were developing in the arteries leading to her heart.

When plaque ruptures, it can cause clots that block blood flow and
trigger heart attacks. The scan would help determine whether Ms.
Hollander would benefit from taking a statin, which could reduce
plaque and prevent more from forming.

"The test is used by more people every year," said Dr. Michael Blaha,
co-director of the preventive cardiology program at Johns Hopkins
University. Calcium scans quadrupled between 2006 and 2017, his
research team reported, and Google searches for related terms have
risen even more sharply.

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