Catching a Clogged Artery [Video]

Mark Wiglesworth started to take more of an interest in his own health the last few years. “Chatting with my son and hearing him speak about his future made me really think I want to be there for that.”

Although he didn’t have symptoms, he discovered that he had high blood pressure and due to his family history, he entered Lee Health’s Heart Health Program. The program looks at Cat scan results and uses AI to deliver a report that shows a 3-D model of your heart with much plaque is in each artery.

“I was thinking, you know, hey, here’s your baseline amount of plaque in your arteries. Well, when we got to one of my arteries, it was severely blocked, 88%,” said Wiglesworth. “And then it was also identified as a soft plaque lesion, which means it had the ability that it could break off. I could just be riding my bike and collapse and be dead.”

It was a serious wake up call for Mark and his son Seth. “One day everything is good, and the next day the only person on your family can be taken away at the drop of a hat.”

Since the blockage was discovered, he was put on medication and got a stent put in about 2 weeks later. “Without this I may not be here today,” said Wiglesworth.

His son Seth said, “Finding this test, and then looking back at my family tree, it just really reiterates the fact to me that I need to maintain my health.”

Currently the program is not fully covered by insurance, but the goal is to eventually expand it to the community. We do offer a self-pay program for those with a significant heart attack risk.

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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries.

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