Seeing artery clogs motivates patients

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People at high risk for heart disease -- but not yet experiencing symptoms -- are more apt to take remedial action when they are able to see the calcium deposited in their coronary arteries, new study findings indicate.

Even though the benefits of cholesterol-lowering medications are well known, they are not used as often as they should be by at-risk patients, Dr. Matthew J. Budoff and colleagues note in their report, published in the medical journal Atherosclerosis.

To test whether visual evidence of their risk would affect patients' behavior, the research team performed electron beam tomography (EBT), which shows calcium as bright white spots in their coronary arteries.

Results showed that "seeing is believing." Among patients with the lowest amount of calcium, 52 percent adhered to treatment with statin drugs; the adherence rate climbed to 91 percent among patients with the highest calcium scores.

Dietary modification saw a similar trend, increasing from 41 percent among those with the lowest calcium to 64 percent among those with the highest.

Budoff, from the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California, and his team "believe that the improved adherence in our study reflected a change in the patients' (and their physicians') perceived threat of their atherosclerotic disease after their EBT test."

SOURCE: Atherosclerosis, April 2006.