Heart Screenings
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The Medical Center of Aurora/Centennial Medical Plaza offers several options for cardiac screenings to help you and your doctor determine how healthy your heart is, and if you are at risk for specific heart diseases.
- HeartScore — an online, free and confidential heart attack risk assessment that takes about eight minutes to complete. Once you finish the survey, you will get your heart attack risk results on your computer.
- Cardiac Calcium Score CT Scan — A Calcium Scoring Computed Tomography (CT) Scan is painless, non-invasive and only takes five minutes. It uses a special machine to obtain multiple X-ray images of the heart and its vessels (more detailed than conventional X-rays). The images allow a doctor to determine your Calcium Score, which reflects the degree and extent of calcium deposits or build up in the walls of your coronary arteries, the vessels that supply oxygen-containing blood to the heart.
You should consider having a CT Cardiac Calcium Score Screening if you:
- Have high blood cholesterol levels
- Have a family history of heart disease
- Have diabetes
- Have high blood pressure
- Smoke cigarettes
- Are overweight or obese
- Are physically inactive
The Medical Center of Aurora offers two different Cardiac CT Calcium Scoring screening packages:
- Cardiac CT Calcium Score for $195.
- Consultation with a Cardiac Nurse, blood screening and Cardiac CT Calcium Score for $245
The Cardiac CT Calcium Score Scan will give you and your physician an idea of whether coronary artery disease is present despite a lack of symptoms, or if it is likely to develop. Together, with your doctor, you can then decide what measures you can take to avoid heart disease.
To schedule an appointment for a Calcium Scoring CT Scan, please call 303-360-3770 and request to have a Calcium Score Scan.
Every year hundreds of thousands of people have heart attacks that could be prevented.
Most times, heart attacks are the result of changes that have been happening in your body for years.
Inside the blood vessels and arteries throughout your body, fatty substances, called plaque, slowly build up, narrowing the vessels and reducing blood flow. These are called hard plaques.
Hard plaques in the heart may be the cause of chest pain and shortness of breath.
And if blood flow is completely blocked, a heart attack occurs.
Soft plaques throughout the body can also be life threatening. These plaques, also called
vulnerable plaques, can easily break open causing a blood clot to form that can stop blood flow in the heart, brain or other parts of the body.
Hard plaque and soft plaque take time to develop. So the sooner you learn to reduce your chances of developing plaque, the sooner you can reduce your chance for developing heart disease.
And if you have plaque, there are ways to help reduce it.
