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A stress test to detect blood vessel blockages in the heart may not be enough to determine if a person with chest pains is free of heart problems, a recent study found.
That's because the stress test pinpoints a person's heart health only at that exact point in time, said Viet Le, lead author of the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute study.
But another tool to test for the amount of calcium — a sign of plaque buildup — in the arteries appears to be helpful in determining long-term heart outcomes, researchers found.
Over a two-year period, researchers studied nearly 660 individuals ages 57 to 77 who passed a stress test, but had calcium later found in their arteries via a coronary calcium scan.
Five percent of those patients — or 31 — had an "adverse cardiac event," such as a heart attack, stroke or death, within a year.
The study was presented Monday to the American Heart Association.
"People say, 'I'm good. They gave me a stress test,' " Le said. "But it doesn't tell the whole story. The story it tells is that on that day your engine — your heart — passed the test. Some of these people die within a year from a heart attack."
Doctors can't reduce calcification, a news release states, but diet, exercise and medication can stabilize the plaque that causes it.
Le believes people with chest pains should have both a stress test and a coronary calcium done to get a full picture of heart health.
A potential barrier, however, is that the calcium scan is not covered by insurance and can cost up to $300 out-of-pocket at Intermountain, Le said.
Depending on the circumstance, he added, Intermountain will cover the cost of the test.
"The key here is that we have the capability to really assess disease and not guess at risk," Le said. The coronary calcium scan is "a way for us to identify disease in an individual."
Twitter: @alexdstuckey