In this first‑person testimonial, 79‑year‑old veteran pilot Mike Vance recounts his 64‑year aviation career, his family’s hidden cardiac history, and his own surprise discovery of coronary calcium during a CTA scan in 2000. He explains how routine FAA physicals and regular exercise gave him a false sense of security, but a high calcium score prompted deeper investigation. Two years ago he underwent a repeat CTA with Cleerly’s advanced plaque analysis, which visualized soft plaque, lipid cores, and arterial narrowing—information that standard calcium scores alone could not provide. Vance describes the Cleerly report as a “mind‑blower” and an eye‑opener that enabled proactive treatment of his plaque progression. He credits Dr. Osborne for recommending the procedure and advocates that anyone with heart‑risk factors should adopt newer imaging technologies and preventive medications to stay safe, especially pilots whose jobs depend on cardiovascular health.
Chapters
I'm Mike Vance. I'm 79 years old. I've been flying airplanes for 64 years. Still fly. I have an antique biplane. As long as I'm physically fit and mentally sharp, I'm going to continue to fly. So, you know, over a period of time, I taught flying for quite a few years. I flew for a regional airline, ended up with a major airline till I retired in 2004 when I turned age 60 and just continued flying. My father was a bomber pilot in World War II, flying B-17s and B-29s in Korea. Flew some of the old World War II airplanes that my father flew. Sadly, my dad wasn't alive to see all that. He died from prostate cancer when he was 60 years old, so too young. He didn't talk about his heart problems with his children, my sister and I, at all. He never talked to us about that. We were completely unaware that he really had a heart problem, and it was only after he died from prostate cancer that they told us one of the reasons he had died is He had cardiovascular disease, and that contributed to his, to his death. You know, pilots, we're always concerned about your health. You've got to have your health. If you don't have your health, you don't have a job. That's why you take FAA physicals. Most pilots take a physical at least once a year. As a captain, I took a physical every 6 months. So I was always concerned about the outcome of these physicals. The only thing that really made it kind of different was an EKG. You know, the irony of the whole thing is, as an active pilot and going and doing physicals every 6 months and exercising and working out and so forth, I had no idea that I had any kind of calcium deposits in my heart or anything like that other than a regular heartbeat. I thought my heart was just fine. Everything was within normal range and actually better. I found out when I had the CTA scan back in 2000 that my calcium numbers were pretty, pretty high. It really turned on a light right there for me, like, hey, You need to start maybe paying more attention to what's going on with your heart. I wanted to know if there's something wrong with me, it's more important for me to take care of me so I don't have a heart attack, you know, maybe flying the airplane with 143 people sitting in the back of the airplane, that I don't have a heart attack. 2 years ago, we got into this discussion about doing a CTA scan and using the Cleerly analysis. And of course, that was something that was totally brand new to me, and I was all for it. So we did it 2 years ago, and then of course we just did it just recently, back in November we did it again so we could see what the trend was. Now we have something to compare the 2 together, and we see there was— there is some progress. That I did have plaque in my heart. Now we're able to treat that progression, but we would not have found that without the Cleerly analysis. So that's where the Cleerly analysis is, in my opinion, so proactive as far as keeping tabs on what's going on with your heart. Because just the numbers alone don't really tell you the true picture, but the Cleerly analysis gave us a pretty clear picture. Maybe that's why they call it the Cleerly. It was a mind-blower because it showed me things that I had never seen before. It showed me the arteries, it showed me the plaque in the arteries, It showed the lipids, it showed soft plaque, everything. And I've never seen anything like that. So the Cleerion analysis was a real eye-opener for me. And I think it's just, it's an absolute wonderful thing and should be something that'd be done by anybody that's got some heart conditions. Absolutely, you bet. And I'm so thankful that Dr. Osborne recommended that I do this procedure. I'd rather be safe on one side than not safe on the other side. You know, as new technology comes out and new medications come out, You have to take advantage of these things, and that's what's going to keep you living.
