Here's what Dr. Steven Nissen, chair of cardiology at Cleveland Clinic, told the LA Times this week about the explosion in the use of CT scans to check for calcium:

"CT calcium scoring has become a cult. It is widely advertised, and in Southern California there were once billboards encouraging people to go in and get their coronary arteries scanned, which can expose them to other risks such as high levels of radiation. Yet there are absolutely no data [showing] that screening people for calcium with CT scanning affects the outcome in terms of survival.

"I buy the fact that if you have more calcium in your coronary, you will have more blockages. But I don't buy that this should dictate what we do. After 20 years, and no clinical proof of better health outcomes, that's why most insurers won't pay for this test. At the Cleveland Clinic, we do offer CT calcium scans, but they are for very specific applications, such as people who must redo their heart bypass surgery.

"Doctors can end up exposing patients to high levels of radiation during the test and recommending unnecessary procedures like cardiac stents to patients who do not need them. Multiple studies have shown that if you find a blockage in a coronary artery in an individual and put a stent in it, it will have no effect on risk of heart attack. That's not how good medicine is practiced.

"And many doctors have moved on even further, to screening with multi-slice CT angiography, which costs more and provides a whopping dose of radiation that increases the cancer risk."

Read more at: http://www.theheart.org/article/1035835.do

Cardiac catheterization is considered the 'gold standard' test, but it is an invasive procedure that is also not without its own risks.

Your doctor can assess other potential reasons for your chest pain - there are several other conditions that may present with chest pain, so each must be ruled out by your physicians. You are on the right track to be pursuing all possible diagnostic options. It's unfortunately common for women to be underdiagnosed with cardiac problems. More about women and heart disease at: http://www.myheartsisters.org