The Hidden Number on Your Heart CT That Predicts Heart Attacks Years Ahead

Key Takeaway

A single flow value derived from a routine coronary CT scan independently predicts heart attack and cardiovascular death over 3 years, beyond risk factors and stenosis grading. Values at or below 0.67 flag real danger, and normal flow offers striking reassurance. This is a risk signal, though, not a mandate to stent.

Two Scans, Same Narrowing, Different Futures

Picture two 63-year-olds with chest tightness on exertion. Both undergo coronary CT angiography, and both reports read the same: a moderate narrowing in the left anterior descending artery, graded identically on CAD-RADS. For decades, that shared anatomic verdict would have put them on the same path. Yet one artery delivers blood to the heart muscle almost unimpeded. The other loses pressure across a long, plaque-laden segment. Diameter tells us how a vessel looks, but it says little about how it works. A nationwide English cohort of 7,836 patients now shows that a computed flow value, extracted from the same CT images, separates these 2 futures. The…