A short YouTube clip (speaker: Dr. Charles Mok) summarizing three cardiovascular screening tests that doctors may omit: a CAT scan/calcium score (cruder, misses soft plaque, useful in younger people), CIMT (carotid intima-media thickness — assesses carotid bulb/media thickness as a body-wide marker; normal suggests low heart risk; abnormal prompts further evaluation), and a contrast-enhanced AI CT study (Cleerly) that characterizes and tracks plaque composition (soft vs hard).
Chapters
So there's three ways you can screen for cardiovascular disease that your doctor might not tell you about. One is called a CAT scan or a calcium score. That's probably the most crude measure and it's beneficial for people that are very young. The disadvantage is that it will miss soft plaques and you can't track it. Another one is called a CIMT Carotid intima media thickness test. That's something we commonly do. We look at the thickness of the bulb and the internal media. Internal media of the of the carotid artery, which is a good signifier for how much cardiovascular disease even have your whole body and that's normal. You don't have to worry about your heart. If it's abnormal, we should be starting worrying about our heart. And the next step after that, that's abnormal. We do what's called the Clery study. C L E E R L Y. This is a special artificial intelligence CAT scan with a contrast that straightens out the arteries and shows the amount of plaque in artery. What is the plaque made of? Is it soft, which is dangerous. Hard, which is okay. And you can also track it along.