CIMT For Cardiovascular Disease Screening

Cardiovascular disease, based on your age, that's the most likely one to kill you, because that's the number one killer of human beings in America, cardiovascular disease. We usually pick it up once you're having chest pain or you have the heart attack or stroke, and by that point you've got the disease. And it can be managed, but you have the disease. But we can screen for it in advance. Now, the way we like to screen for this is called a cimt. It's an ultrasound called cimt, Carotid Intima Media Thickness test. And this looks at your carotid artery, which is right in your neck. So that's a window into your entire cardiovascular system. There's one area of the carotid artery that gives you an average amount of disease for the entire body, or absence of disease. And we look at the thickness of this lining and the amount of what's called plaque burden. Plaque is a little hardening of the arteries. There's little things that occur inside the arteries that thicken over time and cause a stroke or a heart attack. Now, we can go a step further than that with other testing, but that's a good first screening test.