Ultrasound Screening

By Catherine Winters

The carotid artery was the focus of researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who used ultrasound imaging to find plaque buildup. Currently used to detect plaque in people at high risk for stroke, ultrasound is inexpensive, low-risk, and easy to do, says Kwame O. Akosah, M.D., a cardiologist and assistant professor of medicine at the university. In the study, researchers hoped to determine if carotid ultrasound could predict heart attacks or other cardiac events in people who don’t have traditional risk factors.

Ultrasound imaging of the carotid artery was used on 246 men and women considered at low risk for heart disease. Nearly half of them had plaque buildup in the neck artery. The researchers followed the patients for 33 months and found that people who had plaque buildup were nearly three times more likely than people who tested normal to develop severe coronary atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

But ultrasound is not likely to be used to screen for heart disease in healthy people any time soon. Rather, it might one day complement routine tests such as cholesterol checks to better gauge a patient’s heart disease risk, Akosah says.