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.
10 articles
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.
Cholesterol is half the job. Inflammation in the microvasculature is the other half, and it is the layer a standard cardiac workup never actually measures.
The Heart-Attack Risk Hiding in Your Immune Cells
A blood mutation called CHIP turns your own immune cells against your arteries, and it is the cleanest case study I know for how the biology of aging drives chronic disease.
The Question No One Asked
A stent fixed my blockage. No test in that room could say whether a silent heart attack had already left a scar.
The Plaque a Calcium Score Can't See
A severe blockage. A calcium score that would have read zero. And if you ever get chest pain, the one question that gap should make you ask.
The Battle for the Coronary Artery Scan That Saved My Life
I passed the full cardiac workup, all normal. The fight was not against my cardiologist, but against the false comfort of being statistically unlikely.
I Aced Every Cardiac Test. I Still Had an 80% Blockage.
My ECG, echo, Holter, labs, and wearables all looked reassuring. None of them mapped my coronary arteries. Here is the blind spot that nearly killed me.
I Had an 80% Coronary Blockage at 44. Every Test Said I Was Fine.
My name is Nick Hanson. I’m a former health and wellness industry CEO turned clinician-scientist. I’ve been from the boardroom, to the bench, to the bed…