Optimizing Healthcare for Heart Disease with HeartFlow | E. 62

Learn about HeartFlow, the technology revolutionizing precision heart care.

Episode Introduction 

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. HeartFlow’s non-invasive, cutting edge technology aims to improve the patient experience and make cardiovascular care easier for physicians. Topics include, the barriers to obtaining an accurate diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD), condensing the patient experience into a single CAT scan, the data supporting the new technology, and why 80% of the top 50 heart hospitals in the US use HeartFlow. 

 

 

Show Topics

 

 

• The challenge of diagnosing CAD

• Invasive treatments impact the patient experience

• Condensing the patient journey into one CAT scan 

• The importance of data in making treatment decisions

• HeartFlow is revolutionizing precision healthcare

• Embracing new technologies

 

 

 

12:00 The challenge of diagnosing CAD 

Lauren highlighted the difficulty in getting an accurate diagnosis for the causes of chest pain with existing processes. 

 

‘’….heart disease is the number one killer of all Americans. One in every four deaths is going to be related to heart disease. And when someone has stable chest pain, so I'm not talking about MI, the big MIs, those are going to go right to the cath lab or surgery, but when someone has stable chest pain, historically this would trigger a clinician to order a stress test, whether that be exercise, an echo, there's different nuclear scans, all of which have their right place within the medical field and can be very useful. However, specifically for coronary artery disease, these tests show areas of decreased blood flow in a particular area of the heart, or raw motion abnormalities. But it's not clearly answering the question at hand, which is, "Do I have coronary artery disease that is causing my chest pain? Where? Which artery? Is it several? Is it just one? At what spot?" When you want to ask these specific questions, those tests really don't answer those questions. And in fact, 20 to 30% of the time when you go for these tests, they are inconclusive or can give a false reading. So that's pretty concerning. That was surprising to me, personally.’’

 

 

13:30 Invasive treatments impact the patient experience

Lauren said that over half of patients undergo diagnostic cardiac catheterization unnecessarily. 

 

‘’Imagine you have this chest pain and they say, "Oh, we don't know what it is," or, "Looks great." Then something bad happens or looks bad and you end up with further testing that ends up being nothing. So usually it starts with some type of non-invasive test. If the chest pain continues, then the patient would typically be sent for an invasive cardiac catheterization. We're using needles catheters, it's usually in the groin or the arm, dye and radiation are administered. You shoot that dye and you can visualize the coronary arteries on a 2D image that looks like an x-ray in the cath lab. And that's often the gold standard of historically ruling out, that true coronary artery disease, yes or no.  Another surprising thing I found when I came to HeartFlow, 60% of the time when patients go for this invasive test, the coronaries are found to not be obstructed. More than half. More than half of the people going to get a diagnostic cardiac catheterization, either they find nothi