Despite all the attention paid to the dangers of narrowed, clogged arteries, doctors have recently come to believe a new culprit is responsible for the vast majority of the 1.1 million heart attacks that occur annually in the United States. The research, led by head investigator Zahi Fayad, Ph.D., was reported today in Circulation , the journal of the American Heart Association. The new MRI techniques may become an important tool to help physicians identify those individuals who are most likely to suffer a heart attack. This test looks for calcium deposits in the arteries, which are an indication for plaques, but may not detect the actual plaques themselves.
Doctors say the battle between the two techniques is still unresolved.
Fayad claims that the coronary MRI technique is the only non-invasive procedure that examines the quality of their vessel walls. But the CT will be cheaper across the board. It may not become universally available. Others in the field are busy developing an array of more invasive methods to inspect the plaques, including blood tests, internal MRIs, ultrasounds, heat-sensors and visual scopes. The competing techniques will be presented at a conference in New York City this September organized by Dr. Valentin Fuster, director of the Cardiovascular Institute at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.