Preventative Screening

Finally, you have a choice…

You can wait for disease to strike or you can find and treat heart disease and certain cancers at their earliest stages.

There’s an old saying: When your number’s up, your number’s up. Prior to today’s revolutionary preventive medicine advancements, that may have been true.

In the past, doctors and medical professionals were trained to look for the outward symptoms of disease. Once identified, they could make a diagnosis and begin to prescribe treatment. The problem was, once a disease had progressed to the point where there were outward symptoms, it was usually too late! Furthermore, some people never exhibited outward symptoms at all. In fact, for 150,000 Americans each year, the first and only indication they have of coronary disease is a sudden and fatal heart attack!

Take Control of your Health

Now you can do something about it. At Sacramento Heart, you can have a screening test— utilizing our state-of-the-art GE Lightspeed VCT 64-slice scanner—to look inside your body with greater precision and detail than ever before. Our fast and non-invasive tests are designed to detect heart disease, lung cancer and other life-threatening diseases at an earlier, more treatable stage.

What Tests are Available?

Coronary Artery Screen
(Heart Scan or Calcium Score)

The coronary artery screen is a fast and painless CT scan of the heart that, in just a few heartbeats, can detect the presence (or absence) of early heart disease. More specifically, it looks in the coronary arteries—the pipelines that supply blood to the heart—for the plaque that can block blood flow. The heart scan is read and interpreted by a board-certified doctor who will calculate your calcium score—a measurement of calcified plaque in your arteries. The higher the calcium score, the greater the likelihood of a future coronary ‘event’ such as heart attack or the need for angioplasty, stents or bypass surgery. This screen is the most advanced of its kind and is completely non-invasive.

Lung Screen

Sacramento Heart’s Lung Screen is a test designed to screen high-risk and non-symptomatic patients for lung cancer and other lung problems. This scan quickly images the lungs with minimal radiation exposure to detect pulmonary nodules. Clinical research has found that an initial 'baseline' screening of high-risk persons by low-dose advanced CT can detect lung cancer at earlier and more curable stages than ordinary x-ray. When symptoms begin to appear, the five-year survival rate for lung cancer is only 15%. But when assessed with CT for early detection, the five-year survival rate improves to more than 70%!

Brain Screen

The brain screen will image the bone, soft tissues and blood vessels in the brain. It allows an in-depth look inside the head, for the early detection of silent diseases that can be fatal if not detected. It can reveal internal bleeding and other abnormalities, identify increased risk for stroke or provide evidence that a stroke or other brain damage has occurred.

Body Screen

This test scans the entire body and major organs from the neck to the pelvis. It takes multiple high-resolution images, which allow for three-dimensional reconstructions of the entire body. This test includes the heart scan for detecting coronary artery disease, and also includes a scan of the lungs, chest, abdomen and pelvis. It can detect many hidden diseases beyond coronary artery disease, including lung cancer, kidney tumors, liver tumors and abnormalities of the adrenal glands, spleen and gallbladder. Abnormalities in the back, including disc disease and bone abnormalities, can also be identified.

Body Screen & Brain Screen

For individuals who would prefer the most thorough anatomical imaging assessment offered at Sacramento Heart, the Body Screen & Brain Screen is available. It is a comprehensive scan covering all the areas included in the Body Screen plus a scan of the brain to look for tumors and other problems.