When opposite opinions are both right
It's all due to limitations of coronary angiography - the gold standard in testing for blocked heart arteries
YOU have chest pain and have undergone testing for your heart arteries and were told that you have a significantly blocked artery (at least 50 per cent diameter narrowing of the artery). You decided to do another test to confirm the finding and were then told by another doctor that you do not have significant narrowing of the heart artery. You are confused now and wonder whether one of the tests is inaccurate. You will be surprised when told that both tests were correctly interpreted. How then can both tests be correctly interpreted - and there are two totally different results?
Limitations of the gold standard
To unravel this mystery, one needs to understand the limitations of the tests being used to diagnose the presence of narrowed heart arteries. Coronary angiography (CAG) is currently the gold standard for the assessment of narrowing of the heart arteries and it involves the insertion of a plastic tubing through the wrist or groin artery under local anaesthesia into the opening of the heart arteries and injecting iodine based contrast agents into the heart arteries and taking X-ray images of the heart arteries.
BT is now on Telegram!
For daily updates on weekdays and specially selected content for the weekend. Subscribe to t.me/BizTimes
Lifestyle
Former Zouk morphs into mod-Asian Jiak Kim House, serving laksa pasta and mushroom bak kut teh
Massimo Bottura lends star power to pizza and pasta at Torno Subito
Victor Liong pairs Aussie and Asian food with mixed results at Artyzen’s Quenino restaurant
If Jay Chou likes Ju Xing’s zi char, you might too
Mod-Sin cooking izakaya style at Focal
What the fish? Diving for flavour at Fysh – Aussie chef Josh Niland’s Singapore debut