UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, UK. Humans have found a way to predict the weather, markets, and now heart attacks. This novel imaging technique predicts the risk of having a heart attack.

Heart attacks are caused by a plaque in the coronary artery of the heart through obstruction of blood flow. If physicians will be able to predict the likelihood of a heart attack occurring, then immediate interventions at the level of intensive care can be observed such as drug treatments and stent use at that moment to prevent its consequences.

It uses combined CT and PET imaging with a contrast agent, 18F- sodium fluoride or 18F-NaF. The technique could identify on going or active calcification of a plaque in a coronary artery of the heart.

Available non-invasive biomarkers for heart attacks are not as exact in the prediction of when the calcification occurred and where exactly in the heart it is located.

“For decades cardiologists have been looking for ways to detect the high-risk plaques found in coronary arteries that could rupture to cause a heart attack, but it’s been difficult to develop a suitable imaging test that can focus in on these small vessels.” said Dr. Shannon Amoils, Research Advisor from the British Heart Foundation, from which the study got its funding.

Heart diseases is said to be the major cause of death around the world. In the UK, 11 percent of men and 15 percent of women who were admitted in a hospital for a heart attack in 2006 died within 30 days.

The researchers have a long way to go before the technique becomes part of routine clinical practice butt hey know it brings a lot of promise to the world.