World Heart Day: It’s time to do more in the fight against coronary artery disease

By Campbell Rogers, M.D., F.A.C.C., chief medical officer, HeartFlow

Throughout my career as a cardiologist and in my tenure here at HeartFlow, I’ve been fortunate to see many improvements in the way we screen, diagnose, and treat patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Advancements have been remarkable and we have made great progress for people with CAD, but there is still work to be done.

Globally, an estimated 244 million people are living with CAD and many have either no symptoms or symptoms that they or their doctors don’t recognize as cardiac in origin. In the U.S. alone, 18 million adults have CAD and a recent report from the American Heart Association predicted more than 184 million adults in the United States, or 61% of the population, are projected to have some type of cardiovascular disease (CVD) by 2050.

This World Heart Day, the World Heart Federation is urging us to demand cardiovascular action plans to prevent CVD and protect communities from the world’s biggest killer. Long-term protection of communities from CAD begins with patient education. We can do more to empower our patients to take charge of their well-being, ensure they understand the symptoms and risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, and stress the importance of early diagnosis and prevention.

Up to 25% of out‐of‐hospital sudden cardiac arrests occur in individuals who were previously asymptomatic. The silent nature of CAD makes it critical to identify, diagnose, and treat early for the best possible outcomes. As medical professionals, we’re grounded in our commitment to “first, do no harm,” but shouldn’t we take this a step further and commit to “prevent harm” where possible?

For many patients, heart health management begins long before they have symptoms of heart disease. We as providers, by fostering a more collaborative relationship, empathetically asking open-ended questions, and discussing the risk factors for cardiovascular diseases – age, family history, hypertension, diabetes, and lifestyle choices – have the potential to positively impact patients far beyond the four walls of the clinic and potentially before damage has been done or drastic interventions are needed. 

While patient education and communication play important roles in the battle against CAD, screening tools can help physicians give patients a clearer analysis of their health and offer a more definitive diagnosis. The diagnostic journey can often be long, scary and challenging for patients due to lack of clarity around recommendations and use of outdated diagnostic technologies that fail to give a full direct picture of the patient’s heart health.

In fact, some conventional diagnostic methods can result in false negative results 20-30% of the time (leading to potentially undetected disease) and false positives over 50% of the time (leading to unnecessary invasive procedures for patients).

As a practicing cardiologist, I saw these challenges with the diagnostic process and the shortcomings of conventional diagnostic tools firsthand. I hoped we’d someday see definitive change and incorporate technologies that would combine the expertise and experience of physicians with the insights advanced technology can provide.

This vision is what ultimately led me to HeartFlow over a decade ago. Our team began leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to identify CAD before AI became a headline-grabbing theme. Today, HeartFlow ONE remains the only AI-powered non-invasive CAD management platform across the coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) pathway. The technologies that make up our platform have been reviewed in more than 500 clinical papers and are utilized in over   of the top 50 U.S. heart hospitals, and we’ve assessed  of thousands of patients.

HeartFlow technology was designed to offer definitive insight into a patient’s heart disease, the presence of plaque (calcified or non-calcified), and which areas present the most risk for each patient. By combining human ingenuity with advanced technology, the future looks bright in our collective fight against CAD and other cardiovascular diseases. I’m proud of the work the HeartFlow team has accomplished to make CT angiography analyses first-line procedures in cardiovascular care guidelines from major medical societies around the world. This World Heart Day, let’s answer the call to do better – for our patients, our communities, and a healthier future for everyone.

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