To celebrate Heart Month, you may have worn a red shirt to work, reduced your sodium intake, or started exercising, but you may be forgetting the one thing that could actually save your life: learning your calcium score.
The plaques that cause heart attacks are a mixture of cholesterol and calcium, so detecting calcium buildup in the heart is an accurate way to predict a heart attack. Calcium scoring is a painless, quick and low-cost test that uses a special X-ray called Computed Tomography (CT) to detect the amount of calcium buildup in the arteries of the heart.
The best calcium score is zero, meaning that no calcium is present. A high calcium score means that you have a high chance of serious blockage, even if you have few risk factors (weight, age, cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, and family history).
Woman’s offers calcium scoring to women and men. It costs $99 and is not covered by insurance. To schedule your calcium scoring, call 225-924-8391. For more information, click here.