What is Vascular Age?
CIMT is a value which increases with age. Published studies of CIMT measurements on thousands of patients have made it possible to develop a reference range of what is “normal” at different ages.
Measuring the IMT enables us to compare your results to a very large population database and give us a relative age of your arteries… your “vascular age”. For example, C-IMT can tell a 45-year-old patient that he or she has the arteries of a 60-year-old, that sends a very different message than saying the arteries look like those of a 60-year-old.
If your vascular age exceeds your chronological age, then it alerts your healthcare team to be more aggressive at controlling those risk factors associated with heart disease and stroke. More importantly, with various therapies, it is possible to achieve regression or slow down progression of the CIMT. A follow-up CIMT is done 6 to 18 months after therapy is initiated to evaluate the effectiveness of that therapy.
This CIMT test can also be used to follow the success of our preventive therapy in patients with known cardiovascular disease.
Heart disease can be REVERSED!
What is Carotid IMT?
How does it work?
What is vascular age?
Who should do a C-IMT?
Research?
Why look at the neck when we are interested in the heart?