How is the low-dose coronary CT angiogram different than past angiogram machines?
Dr. Berman: In the past, in order to get a coronary angiogram someone had to have a catheter fed up through the leg into the region of the heart and selectively the individual coronary arteries would be injected with contrast. That is called an invasive coronary angiogram. This is now providing us the opportunity to have a non-invasive coronary angiogram. How does the new angiogram work? Dr. Berman: A sophisticated rapid CT scan images the area of the heart fast enough to get stop-action images of the coronary arteries, when this injected contrast is put into vein and is flowing through the coronary arteries. The images give us exquisite detail of the coronary anatomy so we can see blockages of arteries that previously required invasive coronary and geography to detect. What is the main difference between the old and new methods? Dr. Berman: The main difference over the last few years is we now have ways of doing this non-invasively, whereas before we had to do invasive coronary angiog
