I had a lovely supper last night with DeeJay and of course part of the conversation turned to “my condition”, and how I was progressing and why hadn’t I been for a walk the past two days – it was raining, stupid! [I will however go today, even if I am rather busy sorting other stuff out.]
Anyway, in my feed this morning, up popped this trailer to a video which I’ve purchased for pennies and which I’ve prompted the family to watch. I thought it a reasonable thing to do, to share it on the blog.
Essentially this clip tells the story of how a simple and relatively inexpensive, and totally reliable diagnostic and predictive CHD test – the CAC scan – is not being used because the money in medicine in the US follows interventionist diagnostics and practice. As the US leads the world, so the practice follows the US. Scary!
You can purchase the full film here on vimeo – it will only cost you £0.88p – https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thewidowmakermovie2015
PS A number of recent US Presidents (don’t know about Trump though) have had a CAC (or CT) Scan and I believe it’s standard practice for astronauts – makes you think … if it’s good enough for them …
PPS If you’ve the time, you might like to follow these links too:
https://patient.info/doctor/coronary-artery-calcium-score – a fair article that presents the case that not everyone (including probably me) would benefit from a CAC Scan
http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=62977 – an interesting article that opens up the debate between whether Bill Clinton could have avoided bypass surgery if he’d had a CT Scan as well as the stress tests which he passed regularly whilst in office.
http://www.mrict.com/heartscan.asp – another US article that explains why and when you might wish to have a CT Scan.
https://emediahealth.com/2012/05/07/lowering-ct-heart-scan-calcium-score-and-heart-attack-risk-via-diet-and-supplement-changes/ – what do you do when you have an indication that you need to change your lifestyle because of a high CAC reading.
