Your calcium heart score is a measure of the amount of calcium inside the fatty plaque deposit that have accumulated in the walls of your arteries. The fat deposits in the arterial walls calcifies, and a CT scanner can detect this calcium in the same way that X-rays can see calcium in your bones. The amount of calcium can be quantified .This is then used as the basis for evaluating the heart health.This test is also known as the Coronary Artery Calcium (CAC) Test.
It is carried out in the same manner as any other CT scan, involving different parts of the body.It requires around 5 to 10 minutes and is absolutely non-invasive; no injections of any type are required, and fasting is also not essential.
The scoring is as follows :-
Higher scores indicate significant evidence of fatty plaque deposits inside the lining of your heart arteries. As a result, a higher score usually indicate a higher risk of having heart problems e. g heart attacks in the future .
See your cardiologist, who will evaluate you to determine your general heart health. Thereafter he will correlate the score with other risk factors to determine the true estimate of future risk of heart disease . If the overall risk of heart disease is high, he will recommend preventive lifestyle improvements, medicines, and other procedures as needed based on the particular case details. Such aggressive measures will help to lower the risk of adverse heart issues.
An important point to note is that in some persons the calcium score may paradoxically increase with aggressive lifestyle measures and medications. The explanation for this is – as the fatty plaque deposits inside the heart blood vessels stabilize as a consequence of the lifestyle measures and drug therapy etc the calcium levels may actually increase .Thus the Calcium score should always be interpreted keeping the overall case details picture in mind .