Can We Stop A Heart Attack? How Longevity Care May Rewrite Prevention

InnovationHealthcareCan We Stop A Heart Attack? How Longevity Care May Rewrite PreventionByHansa Bhargava,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Physician, AI Optimist, Speaker, Emory Univ, Chief Innovation- Healio Follow AuthorMay 13, 2026, 04:42pm EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This photo taken on July 19, 2021 shows two men jogging as Mount Fuji, some 70 kilometres (43 miles) west of the capital Tokyo. - Climbing (Photo by Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP) (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty ImagesI co-wrote this piece with Dr. Jeffrey Chen, a Harvard-trained emergency medicine physician who now practices longevity medicine as Founding Medical Director of Peak Health. Over the course of our conversations, one patient story kept coming back — and it captures why the way we practice needs to change. Her name, age, and other details are altered for privacy, though the overall story is true.Sarah was 42 years old, a devoted mother, and by every standard measure, healthy. Her annual checkup looked reassuring: normal blood pressure, normal cholesterol by traditional standards. She ate well and frequently ran 5k races. Her family physician ran her numbers through the standard risk calculators used across American medicine and concluded what most doctors would: she didn’t qualify for further cardiac workup.But Sarah had a family secret hiding in plain sight. Her father had suffered a massive heart attack and died at age 52. That nagging detail, a history that traditional risk models consider though tend to underweight, was the thread that unraveled everything.‘ I needed to take a different approach’, Dr Chen said. He ordered a coronary artery calcium scan, a quick, low-radiation CT scan that directly images the heart’s arteries for calcium deposits, looking for the buildup that hardens inside artery walls over years.The r...