Innovative Heart Scans: Uncovering Hidden Risks of Heart Attacks

0:00 But like the average age of a sudden fatal heart attack that knocks down the game, right 51 0:06 of my 0:11 favorite podcasts. Dr. Ryan is something called all in podcast. It's a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and a billionaire too. They did a really interesting breakdown. A few weeks back, Brad Gerstner with Gerson was talking about was kind of something about cardiovascular health and CT scans. But what he kind of missed on was that nuance between calcified and non calcified plaque, right? Not all plaques the same, some plaques are stable, some are more dangerous. Some stats were kind of alarming, though. Right, which is the first average heart attack in guys men is 65 women and 72 years old, but like the average age of a sudden, fatal heart attack that knocks down the game, right? 50 years old. That's why we're so concerned for entrepreneurs and business owners guys that are kind of under the gun, right? They have no often. But what's really challenging is the current CT scans aren't aren't the best with diving deep and between calcified and non calcified. What are your thoughts on? 1:01 Yeah, well, I mean, I think, first of all, no, plug Brad Gerstner bringing it to the forefront. I mean, heart disease is the number one killer of adults here in the US. It's, you know, the number one leading cause of death, followed by a cancer and then apparently COVID-19 A lot of people are they think of other things like, you know, breast cancer, prostate cancer, it's really just, it's really hard tax that's for men and women. Then secondly, I'm really happy that he brought the idea of the CT scans, which as you mentioned, James Lutz, you really refer to the calcified plaque. But he did miss that one point because the reality is, there is some controversy as to what plaque is, the more concerning what exactly is plaque. So plaque is really the composition in your arteries, it's really consisted of a couple of different compounds, cholesterol, lipids, calcium, and fibric. And so soft plaque is a plaque that is primarily on calcified and that's the plaque that many cardiologists think is a lot more dangerous because it is more prone to break down and embolize and potentially cause a heart attack. And unfortunately, the calcium scan cert on the CT angiogram is where you get a calcium score, only assessed for the calcified plaque. And from any cardiologist, they feel by counsel I pack it's not as dangerous. It does decrease blood flow, but it's more stable, where it does have a chance to immobilize to move right and cause a heart attack. 2:21 Right. It's that so it's kind of interesting, though, somebody that in that echelon, they were talking about Sanford Health and you know, some brand name hospital systems, right. Yeah, they didn't have access to know about the nuances between the two, right? That was really fascinating. And shout out to him. He's a fantastic public, private Patreon investor, but this is probably not his power ally. But I guess going back to that concept there on soft plaque, right, we have kind of a new test that does a 3d visualization. Why does that matter though? 2:46 The idea behind it JD is we have a 3d visualization of your coronary artery. So you can have a calcium score with just like a score an aggregate of all the calcified plaques, but there could be certain areas or certain lumens of certain arteries that are far more calcified are or have far more soft plaque than other areas. Right. And, as he kind of mentioned, the typical CT angiogram, when you develop a calcium score only looks at the calcified plaque. You could have soft plaque, you could have it in several different arteries, maybe you could, it could be in your certain flex your anterior descending here, right coronary artery, you're not certain where it is exactly, just have a number right. And then, as we talked about, it really does not talk about the soft plaque soft plaque, which is not really discernible on a typical CT angiogram with some of the new scans out there, particularly the one through clearly AI, you can actually establish that the number doesn't necessarily it gives you like a like the amount of calcium and accurate doesn't necessarily give you certain areas. There's no it's like you could have a smaller calcium score. But if most of that calcium is concentrated in one artery, and you're in it's pretty Sonos and you have your high risk for heart attack, while it doesn't really help you