The first sign of trouble was chest pains while playing tennis. The pain subsided after a couple of minutes and I was fine. EKG showed no sign of heart attack or major blockage. Prior to that I had no symptoms whatsoever, exercised regularly, never smoked, 57yo male, 6 ft, 175lbs. A CAC scan revealed a calcium score of 411 and a stress test indicated a major lack blood flow to the front of the heart. A cardiac catheterization revealed 95% blockage of the Left Anterior Descending artery, the widowmaker. After placing two stents in the LAD I’m back to normal. It’s a small miracle I didn’t die that day on the tennis court. The CAC definitively diagnosed the life threatening blockage when I had absolutely no symptoms. I recommend everyone get this simple scan to find out if you have this killer inside of you.

63, no history of heart disease, all my numbers in the "normal" range, fit, don't smoke, not overweight, good diet, etc. I was building a greenhouse in the back yard and went from feeling kind of "shitty" to classic left chest and back of arm pain.

It's amazing how fast you get into the ER when you come in like that. I got an angiogram within 45 minutes and also had 2 stents in the LAD with 90-95% blockage.

I'm sure your doc already told you this but chest pain while playing tennis that goes away quickly sounds more like angina than a heart attack. IOW your episode was not a heart attack but rather a strong indicator that a future heart attack was likely and that further tests were warranted.

A real heart attack (MI) -- the kind that can kill you quickly -- is usually not exercise related and the pain continues for many tens of minutes without going away.

PSA: If you experience either type of symptom above, call 911. Don't wait around and don't drive yourself to the hospital. Take an aspirin if you have one handy and you're not allergic to it. Real aspirin, not ibuprofen or tylenol.

>when I had absolutely no symptoms

Chest pain during excretion is a symptom in my book.

>Recommend everyone to get it

A calcium scan is a ECG gated CT scan(a heart CT). It takes time from the CT machine schedule and it requires radiologists to describe it, meaning it's not infinitely accessible.

I wish cardiovascular monitoring was better. It's not uncommon for cardiologist to discharge you saying 'all fine, EKG ok' even though reality says otherwise.

Happy you got stents at the right time.

What were your lipids? Was a stress test not conducted?

When did you previously have a stress test before this? Would you also mind sharing what your blood pressure levels were at?

> EKG showed no sign of heart attack

What about troponin? I was told by a Dr that it's more accurate than an EKG.

Edit: I had the word tryptophan before.

For me, it was different.

A cardiologist told me (after a calcium test showed 95th percentile for calcium) that what I was looking for was a rapid drop in ability. Not over a decade, but over a couple weeks or a month. Well, I play ultimate, and one day I realized "I didn't get this winded a month ago". So I got a stress test, and it showed "abnormal motion of the heart wall under stress" (that is, not enough oxygen getting to all the heart muscles). They did a catheterization, and I wound up with two stents.

I mean, look, if you get the chest pains, don't ignore that. But it doesn't have to be that way. If you lose athletic ability, or wind, or endurance, in a short amount of time, get a stress test.