SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - How's your heart?
For years the answer to that question has depended on the standard cholesterol test, a blood exam.
Now, for the first time in decades, doctors are saying they have something better.
In fact, it's already known as the "best test."
The standard, traditional test almost all of us take searches the blood for bad cholesterol. For most, the levels are fine. For others, a lifetime of lifestyle changes, medication and monitoring to bring down bad cholesterol is the first step toward life-long health and wellness.
Dr. Paul Lamanski is one of the nation's foremost experts on "preventive" cardiology, a relatively new science focused on finding heart ailments before they make people sick.
"As important as cholesterol is, it is only part of figuring out risk,” Dr. Lamanski said, “We use cholesterol as part of a global risk assessment."
Lamanski and others are using a new tool to do it - a test - better than any of the rest.
It's called a "VAP" or Vertical Auto Profile test.
The VAP test is more than three times better than the normal cholesterol test. It looks at 15 blood components rather than the normal four, measuring particles in the blood.
"Small particles are more likely to get into the artery wall and cause a plaque, a cholesterol plaque, than are larger particles,” said Lamanski, “While the test does not get into particle number, which is really one of the most important aspects of it, it does give an indication of particle size."
So who needs to have their particles measured?
Anyone whose traditional test shows low risk, but whose family history shows high risk.
Steven Gotleib, a heart patient said, "The idea is to keep me healthy, rather than to treat some illness that I have."
Despite the fact that Gotleib's traditional test showed no warning signs, he was still nervous.
The clearer picture revealed hidden signs of heart disease doctors only found in his father after he died.
"My dad lived to be four months shy of a hundred. But he did have heart desease,” Gotleib said, “He had what's called congestive heart failure, and he probably had that for a couple of decades."
Now, Doctor Lamanski can do a better job of treating his patient.
"My job is to treat patients with medication to lower cholesterol,” said Lamanski, “provided they've done the lifestyle and dietary piece, to treat them with medication, but only the medication that is absolutely necessary and no more than is absolutely necessary."
You don't have to go to a state-of-the-art laboratory to take the test. The test can come to you- in a kit, about the size of box of candy.
That allows anyone who thinks they may be a candidate for this "best test" to ask their own doctor to give it.
