HEALTH & FITNESS
on the cover

New study sho
improves heart attack diaghb

Judith Doner Berne

Special to the Jewish News

W

hen his dad had "very
dramatic cardio vascular
surgery" in 1969, Dr. James
Goldstein was a pre-med student. His
dad's surgeon played a role in Goldstein
choosing cardiology.
"'This is the most exciting field you
could ever embark on: he told me
Goldstein said. "'Every day is exciting.'"
And Goldstein, a Bloomfield Hills resi-
dent, has found it so. "I get it:' he told the
surgeon at the time. "And it's the way I feel
now."
He's happy that son Jacob, 23, who is
headed to medical school, also "gets it,"
although he can't be certain he'll end up a
cardiologist.
"It (medicine) is an intellectual oppor-
tunity, a chance to help people and to
make a contribution to knowledge and
practice," Goldstein said. And it's a way "to
leave the world a slightly better world than
you found it."
And that's very much what Goldstein

"The new 64-slice CT (computed
tomography) scanners give us
amazing pictures of the heart"

— Dr. James Goldstein

appears to be accomplishing.
As director of cardiology research and
medical education for William Beaumont
Hospitals, he has had a hand in why U.S.
News & World Report ranks Beaumont-
Royal Oak 12th for heart care and heart
surgery on its current America's Best
Hospitals list. Cleveland Clinic is ranked
first, the University of Michigan 22nd and
Henry Ford Hospital-Detroit 37th.
Most recently, Goldstein led the first
clinical study to document a more accu-
rate, definitive, less intrusive, faster and
less costly method than the standard diag-
nostic testing for emergency room chest
pain patients.
•

With standard testing, patients have a
series of electrocardiograms and cardiac
enzyme tests over eight to 12 hours fol-
lowed by a rest and/or stress imaging
study.
But the study shows that for patients
who have never had heart disease, whose
initial electrocardiogram is inconclusive
and blood tests normal, a better alterna-
tive now exists.
"The new 64-slice CT (computed tomog-
raphy) scanners give us amazing pictures
of the heart," Goldstein said, as he showed
off the room-size scanner, which allows
detailed pictures of the coronary arteries
and beating heart for the first time.

By The Numbers
Beaumont researchers found that CT alone
was able to determine that heart disease
was the cause of chest pain — or reliably
rule out that possibility — in 75 percent
of patients. The remaining 25 percent had
a nuclear scan in addition to CT.
The time it took to make a diagnosis
averaged 3.4 hours with CT, as compared
to 15 hours with the standard diagnos-
tic approach, and costs of testing were
reduced by 15 percent. Patients went home
more quickly with a definitive diagnosis
and unnecessary hospital admissions were
avoided.
"If you come in early and there's no
disease, you can be in Birmingham for
lunch," Goldstein said from his Royal
Oak-Beaumont office. "If you have disease,
you're in the cath (cardiac catherization)
lab" for invasive testing.
"We had the second (CT scanner) in
the country," Goldstein said. "As soon as I
saw the quality of the images it could pro-

Heartfelt on page 26

JN•

April 26 2007

25

