Thanks
LR, it is indeed an interesting area. I've got some interest in this area as my patients are more likely to drop dead of heart disease more than anything else.
Doctors, especially radiogists, are very much like pilots. Slightly nurdy.
The trouble is, they sometimes get a little hooked on the process, rather than the outcome. We can have a fantastic process, but we need to be sure of the outcome. Drugs companies are very good at selling process, telling us what chemical blocks which receptor, but what I really need to know, is if intervention a makes a difference to outcome b. (Eg. will your pill stop a patient dying of heart disease, and if so, does it kill them of anything else?) Sounds a bit simplistic, but there have been some spectacular examples of late.
Gotta be honest, I'm not sure what the exact procedure is for the tests which look at calcium deposits. (I'm told that medical radiation sparks off about 200 cancers a year in the UK).
I'd need to be convinced that the test makes a difference to planes dropping out of the sky or prediction/prevention of an arterial event (and I'd agree, when performing a risk/benefit analysis, airline pilots are in a different category than Jo Average).
From the stuff I've seen, (big study at NEJM 2008:358:1336), the technology, unfortunately, isn't yet good enough.
However-watch this space.
