Dr. Tara Narula

It generally costs about $100.

And what it does is it looks for spots of calcified or hardened plaque in the heart arteries.

And you get a number.

If your score is zero, that's great.

You're considered low risk.

Anything zero to 10 is sort of low.

10 to 100 is moderate.

Above 100 is a high risk person.

So this helps us risk stratify people.

We also have blood tests.

So there are newer blood tests in addition to lipid panels, which a lot of people know about.

We have something called lipoprotein A, which is LP little a. This is a genetically inherited bad cholesterol, not controlled by diet or exercise.

One in five people worldwide have a high LPA.

That is associated with an elevated risk of heart attack and stroke and aortic valve disease.

We have other markers like apoprotein B and CRP, which is a marker of inflammation.

And then we have what we call risk calculators.

So the most common one in cardiology we use is called PREVENT.

You can go online today and Google the PREVENT risk calculator and easily put in your age, some of your numbers, even your zip code in some cases and some other factors, and it will give you a 10-year and a 30-year risk of having a cardiovascular disease event.

So these are some of the things we use to really look at someone, take their history, take their numbers, and give them a sense of what their risk is.

Prevent.