CT scans do involve exposure to radiation of course, but the benefit presumably outweighs the risk in your case. I wouldn’t worry about it - you could also ask the doctor about this if you’re concerned, although I don’t think you should be.
This chart might help put things into perspective: https://xkcd.com/radiation/
See also here.
The thallium scan exposes you to More
Lifetime it’s estimated 10,000 chest x rays or 25 chest CT scans are the limit for deterministic effects.
I would also worry about the risk that any heart problems aren’t treated in right ways, than the risk of CT radiation.
Any examination using ionizing radiation the basic rule is to use ‘ALARP’ , which means as low as reasonably practicable. This is why your doctor hasn’t recommended multiple examinations in one go. He wants one and then to see from that what is required next.
You are also exposed to similar amounts of radiation when flying , a ten hour flight is on a par with a chest x Ray for dose. Certain parts of countries due to the geology have higher levels of background radiation.
The bottom line is your doctor needs these examinations to treat you. And since these examinations have been available people live longer.
Hello, I’m back to give an update on the test results. After doing the test I had another appointment with the cardiologist for getting the results and he told me that I don’t have any problem with my arteries. I asked for a report with all the images from the CT scan and so, and in one of the pages it’s said that my calcium score is 0, which sounds awesome:
However I wonder why there’s a red dot in that chart in what would be age 42.5. That’s not my age. Does that mean that the report needs to be fed with real data which hasn’t been actually done?
Another page of the “vitrea report”:
Not sure what can be read here. Probably those numbers in the table are important but I don’t know if there’s anything relevant there.
Another page this time from the “summary”:
This time there’s a Ca Score… (something unknown after the dots) which SD (standard deviation?) is 60. What would be SD (Standard Deviation?) in this context? isn’t it that a huge deviation when values like 50 in the Ca score make already a difference? What would be the CT Standard with SD of 30? No idea.
And just for the fun, the third page of the “summary” section has this graph. No idea what it is and what it may reveal:
Any insights / explanations / interpretations are more than welcome. I truly want to understand all this shit. I’ve asked other opinions through other people but I just got that if my score is 0 then everything’s fine.
HOWEVERI asked the doctor then where the ischemia is coming from and he said that it “could be from the secondary irrigation”, and I wonder if that could be a problem. He said “no problem because no risk of infarction” but actually that’s not true according to some papers I found on the topic (‘Ischaemia with No Obstructive Coronary Arteries (INOCA)’).
Also I wonder if the report I got is solid or if some data wasn’t entered or what.
