Скачать или смотреть Thursday Morning Medical Update: How Cardio Scores Help with Heart Risks

The University of Kansas Health System is treating a total of 54 COVID patients today, same as yesterday. Other significant numbers:

29 with the active virus today, down from 31 yesterday
5 in ICU, same as yesterday
1 on a ventilator, 2 yesterday
25 hospitalized but out of acute infection phase, up from 23 yesterday

Key points from today’s guests:

Shirley Verbenec, nurse practitioner, The University of Kansas Health System
Anybody who has any risk factors for heart disease is a candidate to get the get the score.
Those risk factors could include family history, smoking, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol.
Your heart has hard plaque and soft plaque and this test detects hard plaque.
The plaque is not reversable, but we can prevent progression of plaque which could prevent a heart attack or blockage.
The test is not always covered by insurance, however the cost of it is about the same as a co-pay (about $45).

Kaye Ness, CardioScore consultant & exercise specialist, The University of Kansas Health System
The test will measure the calcification (hardening) of the plaque with a score.
Genetics is a piece of the puzzle when it comes to heart plaque, but we can also help reduce our risk and slow down plaque progression with a healthy lifestyle, diet, and exercise.
For cholesterol levels, there are some things that we just we cannot control and genetics is one of them and that can affect your cholesterol numbers.
Many people have a family history of high cholesterol and have problems keeping it at goal despite a healthy lifestyle.


Jill Chadwick, patient (and also Director of Media Relations and the Medical News Network, The University of Kansas Health System)
Inspired by her husband, who previously got this test, to also receive this test.
She had concerns because of some family history of heart problems.
The test itself is a CT scan of the chest and only takes about five minutes, then reading the results takes another five minutes.
Both she and her husband had scores of 0, indicating no hard plague, however they have very different body types. What it looks like on the outside is not a perfect indicator of what is happening inside the body.

Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control, The University of Kansas Health System
On Merck’s donation of 100,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine to Uganda’s outbreak, this is a different strain than a previous one, so it will be important to see if this donated vaccine helps.
Separately, the bivalent COVID booster for six months and older is still undergoing further tests and data analysis and that may be causing a delay in becoming available. So far, all of the data suggests it is safe.


Friday, October 28 at 8:00 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. We’ll go behind the scenes to share the story of the medical team who helped add months to the life of a beloved animal at the Kansas City Zoo.

Visit our website, www.kansashealthsystem.com or findadoctor.kansashealthsystem.com.