Anais Picazzo

Comparing Heart Scores of Men and Women

Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis

 This semester I had the opportunity to be a Cardiac Screening intern at Franciscan Health

in the Heart Center. My internship began January 7 of this year and will be completed May 10.

The Cardiac Screening program was initially started by Amy Heiny, a health promotion

specialist, 10 years ago at Franciscan Health. She valued the importance of preventive care and

believed this screening program would detect early onset of heart, lung, and vascular disease.

Since then the program has shown to increase awareness of heart disease and has began

branching out to other Franciscan hospitals in Northwest Indiana and Chicago.

Services provided by the Heart Center are lung scans, heart scans, vascular screenings,

and heart health assessments. For this project I chose to focus on heart scan results and

cholesterol. A CT scan is used to detect calcium deposits in the arteries of the heart. Heart health

assessments were completed by the interns. This included a cholesterol screening, blood sugar

screening, blood pressure check, and BMI assessment. As an intern it was my responsibility to

guide patients to and from their screenings, inform them of what to expect during the scans, and

go over their heart assessment results before they receive their calcium scores. After spending

time with patients before and after scans, I found that most patients were happy about the prices

for the screenings. Some patients were nervous due to claustrophobia or fear of receiving bad

results. After the scans, all patients were satisfied on how quick and easy the process was.

Patients would receive same day results of their heart scan which includes a picture of their heart

and any findings. All results were easy to understand and were explained by the health

promotion specialist.

This project is a small study that compares heart scores between men and women that

were seen in the Franciscan Heart Center from January 7, 2019 to April 19, 2019. We saw a total

of 1,255 patients that received a combination of heart scans (1,102), lung scans (125), and
vascular screenings (28). For this project I chose to focus on calcium scores of men and women

due to limiting access of patient medical records. As an intern I was responsible for inputting

patient data that included the date of their appointment, the screenings they were receiving, age,

gender, address, cholesterol results, and screening results in a master excel sheet. This database

was checked twice by other interns to ensure accuracy of information.

There were 541 men and 561 women between the ages of 23-84 that received heart scans.

The average age was 58 years old. Calcium scores were calculated from 0 to 1,000. Patients who

received a 0 heart score did not have any calcium findings. Patients who received heart scores

between 1 and 99 were told to follow up with their primary care provider. Patients who received

heart scores greater than 100 were advised to follow up with a cardiologist. The total average of

heart scores was 267.63. Men’s average heart scores (325.93) were significantly greater than

women’s heart scores (182.61). The highest calcium score was 6,872.24. Graph 1 compares

average heart scores of men and women monthly. There was no positive correlation between

cholesterol and heart scores (Graph 3).

This project has showed me that controllable risk factors such as weight, diet, and

physical activity help to maintain cholesterol but uncontrollable risk factors, such as age and

family history, greatly impact results and heart scores no matter how healthy or active one is. If I

could change one thing about my project it would be to include the patients ethnicity. I would

make sure to include this information in the database. I believe that this is an important factor to

consider in any healthcare setting.

My supervisor was pleased with my project and asked me to share it during our lunch and

learn presentation. Overall, I enjoyed putting the results together and am shocked to see how

many patients we have seen in four months.

Graph 1. Average Hearts Scores by Month (Jan-Apr)

Graph 2.

Age Heart Score Max Heart Score

Women 59.10 182.62 2873.19
Men 57.55 325.94 6872.24

Graph 3