Many people who need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 but are concerned about the associated risks choose to have a cardiac vascular computer scan before vaccination to rule out moderate or greater vascular stenosis (more than 50% of the diameter). .
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Cardiovascular examination by computer scanning: It is a non-invasive cardiovascular examination, and its accuracy is certainly not as high as that of invasive angiography. But its valuable part is its non-invasiveness and its high negative predictive value (NPV). A high NPV means that if the computer scan of the heart vessels is normal, the narrowing of the heart vessels is very low. The disadvantage of computerized scanning is that it has the opportunity to overestimate the degree of vascular constriction.
A number of studies have pointed out that severe vascular stenosis detected by computerized scanning, such as referral to invasive cardiac angiography, will find that the degree of vascular stenosis is not as severe as described in the computerized scan report. The reason is that the limitations of computerized scanning technology can overestimate the degree of narrowing of blood vessels near calcified plaques.
This overestimation of vascular stenosis is more common if the patient has a high calcium score. Patients with high calcium scores have been estimated to have severe stenosis of the entire blood vessel, but in invasive angiography it was found that the degree of vascular stenosis was only mild.
Ultimately, the cardiologist decided for the patient that no stent was needed. We may consider the computer scanning cardiovascular examination as a kind of inspection tool that is better than neglecting, and do not want to miss any opportunity to open the cardiovascular system to save life.
▲ Dr. Shum Shing Fai, Specialist in Radiology
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The title has been edited and modified by TOPick, and the original title is “Computer Scanning of Cardiovascular Standards”
Written by: Shum Shing Fai, Specialist in Radiology