Topic
Diagnostic Toolkit
What the tests can and cannot see. Why standard cardiac workups miss subclinical disease, what CCTA and calcium scoring actually measure, and how to advocate for the right scan.
11 articles
What Keeps Plaque in Your Heart Arteries From Rupturing?
Is soft plaque dangerous? Whether a plaque ruptures depends on its fibrous cap, which no CT report measures. What thins it, and the trials where caps thickened.
Your Angiogram Was Clean. Nobody Tested Whether Your Artery Clamps.
Coronary artery spasm is diagnosed with an acetylcholine test in the cath lab, not an angiogram. What it measures, why it is rarely run, how drugs blunt it.
I Finally Have the Diagnosis That Explains Years of Chest Pressure. It Wasn't Anxiety. It Was Never "All in My Head."
A stent didn't stop the episodes. Every scan said fine. The answer came from the one test I almost turned down.
I Was Ready to Pay to Watch My Plaque Shrink. Then I Learned the Number Moves on Its Own.
AI plaque analysis from Cleerly and HeartFlow measures arteries to the cubic millimeter. Rescan an hour later and the number moves. Read before you pay for one.
I Crushed My ApoB to 38. Nobody Measured My Small Vessels.
Coronary microvascular dysfunction hides behind a clean angiogram. How it is diagnosed, why inflammation drives it, and why an ApoB of 38 was not enough.
The Heart-Attack Risk Hiding in Your Immune Cells
Clonal hematopoiesis (CHIP): a blood mutation that roughly doubles coronary risk. No cardiology society screens for it. Why, and why I stopped chasing the test.
The Question No One Asked
A stent fixed my blockage. No cath-lab test could say whether a silent heart attack had already left a scar. Cardiac MRI can, and a stent doesn't rule it out.
The Plaque a Calcium Score Can't See
A calcium score only sees calcified plaque. Mine would have read zero with a severe soft-plaque blockage in place. What a 0 rules out, and what it doesn't.
The Battle for the Coronary Artery Scan That Saved My Life
ECG, echo, Holter, stress test: all normal. A coronary CT angiogram (CCTA) found an 80% blockage anyway. What it shows, and the exact words to ask for it.
I Aced Every Cardiac Test. I Still Had an 80% Blockage.
My ECG, echo and Holter all missed an 80% blockage. Only two tests see plaque in the artery: a calcium score and a CT angiogram (CCTA). Which one to ask for.
I Had an 80% Coronary Blockage at 44. Every Test Said I Was Fine.
Every test was normal at 44: ECG, echo, Holter. Then a CT angiogram found an 80 percent heart blockage. How serious that is, and the fight to get the scan.