An Inside Look at the Arteries ...

[Guest guest]

This is a great article. Too bad the statins were still advised for the

patient undergoing the scan. The site has cool pictures as well.

Deanna

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/health/12case.html (excerpt follows)

Of course, this makes me a cardiologist's nightmare, the boastful

exception that gives other guys the excuse to eat bacon and keep smoking

<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/smo\

king/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.

And when I reach 52 next year, I could still drop stone dead as my

paternal grandparents did at that age.

Nearly half of all heart attacks are in people with normal cholesterol,

and about 10 percent are caused by arterial spasms, unrelated to

atherosclerosis.

But the scan did demonstrate something that skeptical patients like me

have long argued. Heart disease is unpredictable, and dumb luck is a

much bigger part of the picture than the medical industry, with its

expensive machinery and scientific numerology, likes to admit