Coronary artery calcification in renal transplant recipients.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality in renal transplant recipients. Although renal transplant recipients frequently undergo cardiac functional tests prior to surgery, coronary atherosclerosis can remain undetected. Coronary artery calcification (CAC), an early marker of atherosclerosis can be quantified using EBCT. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent and characteristics of CAC at the time of renal transplantation. We evaluated 79 consecutive incident asymptomatic renal transplant recipients. Patients were mostly White (62%), male (54%) and had a deceased donor renal transplant (61%). The mean age was 47 (12.1) years. Sixty-five percentage of subjects had CAC. The mean CAC score was 331.5 (562.4) with a median of 43.3. Older age, presence of diabetes, not having a preemptive transplant, deceased donor transplantation and hypercholesterolemia were significantly associated with presence of CAC univariately. Median CAC scores were significantly increased in subjects with diabetes (127.8 vs. 28.9, p=0.05), exposed to dialysis (102.9 vs. 3.7, p<0.001) and deceased donor recipients (169.7 vs. 7.5, p=0.02). Using multiple logistic regression, age and time on dialysis were significantly associated with the presence of CAC at the time of transplant. In summary, CAC is prevalent in patients undergoing kidney transplant. CAC may be a method to identify renal transplant recipients at increased risk for future cardiovascular events.
Renal, Electrolyte and Hypertension Division, Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Sylvia.rosas@uphs.upenn.edu
Sylvia E
SE
Rosas
Korlei
K
Mensah
Rachel B
RB
Weinstein
Scarlett L
SL
Bellamy
Daniel J
DJ
Rader
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002114:Calcinosis / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D003331:Coronary Vessels / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007676:Kidney Failure, Chronic / Q000628:therapy; D016030:Kidney Transplantation; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed