Heart Scanning UK

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Heart Scans

Coronary calcium scans, also known as heart scans or CT angiography, provide pictures of the coronary arteries so your doctor can identify the presence of calcium in the arteries and look for blockages. The result of this test is often called a coronary calcium score.
Heart scans and coronary calcium scoring may indicate if you're at higher risk of a heart attack or other problems well before you have any outward symptoms of disease.

Lung scans

Lung scans are so good at seeing nodules or spots on the lung that about half of those screened will have one or more nodules. A majority of these nodules are tiny and don't need immediate testing, but they do need follow-up Lung scans to detect any changes.

Lung Scanning

Ventilation and perfusion lung scanning were performed preoperatively and postoperatively in 169 patients and classified blindly according to preset criteria. Perfusion lung scan abnormalities were present in 25 (15%) of the preoperative scans and 42 (25%) of the postoperative scans; 16 (38%) of the 42 abnormal postoperative scans were identical to the preoperative scans. Perfusion defects indicating a "high probability" of pulmonary embolism (lobar or segmental defects) were present in 5 preoperative scans and 10 postoperative scans; the 10 postoperative scans were classified as showing "definite" (5), "possible" (1) or "no" (4) pulmonary embolism on the basis of the preoperative scan and the ventilation scan; none of the 10 patients had clinical evidence of pulmonary embolism. Venous thrombosis was present in 12 patients, including 4 of the patients whose lung scanning showed definite pulmonary embolism.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Lung Scan

A controversial study suggests that computed tomography (CT) scans catch lung cancer early in smokers and other high-risk people, enabling doctors to intervene when they still can improve a patient's chances of survival. However, some scientists criticize the study's design for leaving many questions unanswered. The Heart-Scan team now offer the CT Lung Scan. For the new study, which began in 1993, scientists did CT scans of about 31,000 generally healthy people and gave follow-up scans to more than 27,000 of them within 18 months. The participants, who were average age 61, were all smokers, ex-smokers, or people exposed to secondhand smoke or some other lung hazard, such as asbestos or radon. In the two screenings, or in the interim, 484 participants were diagnosed with lung cancer. Of these, 412 had early-stage cancer confined to the lung. Most underwent surgery promptly after diagnosis. You can contact lung scan for further information.