Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection
(SCAD)
Diagnosis
Since spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) doesn’t have any warning signs and symptoms, it’s difficult to diagnose before it leads to a heart attack. And most SCAD patients are young and aren’t typically at risk for having a heart attack or other heart-related conditions such as heart disease.
SCAD can be diagnosed in someone who’s having a heart attack by using coronary angiography, which is a diagnostic procedure that involves using a catheter and provides detailed X-ray pictures of the heart and its blood vessels, or sometimes by computed tomography angiography (CTA), which also provides detailed images of the blood vessels and the blood flow within them but without the use of a catheter. It can often be treated medically by using drugs to manage the pain and facilitate the natural healing of the artery. There’s some evidence showing that the majority of dissected segments will heal spontaneously with just supportive medical care.