title: Significance of coronary calcification for prediction of coronary artery disease and cardiac events based on 64-slice coronary computed tomography angiography.
abstract: This work aims to validate the clinical significance of coronary artery calcium score (CACS) in predicting coronary artery disease (CAD) and cardiac events in 100 symptomatic patients (aged 37-87 years, mean 62.5, 81 males) that were followed up for a mean of 5 years. Our results showed that patients with CAD and cardiac events had significantly higher CACS than those without CAD and cardiac events, respectively. The corresponding data were 1450.42 ± 3471.24 versus 130 ± 188.29 (P < 0.001) for CAD, and 1558.67 ± 513.29 versus 400.46 ± 104.47 (P = 0.031) for cardiac events. Of 72 patients with CAD, cardiac events were found in 56 (77.7%) patients. The prevalence of cardiac events in our cohort was 13.3% for calcium score 0, 50% for score 11-100, 56% for score 101-400, 68.7% for score 401-1,000, and 75.0% for score >1000. Increased CACS (>100) was also associated with an increased frequency of multi-vessel disease. Nonetheless, 3 (20%) out of 15 patients with zero CACS had single-vessel disease. Significant correlation (P < 0.001) was observed between CACS and CAD on a vessel-based analysis for coronary arteries. It is concluded that CACS is significantly correlated with CAD and cardiac events.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Imaging and Intervention, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Linkou, Healthy Aging Research Center, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan 333, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yuan-Chang
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Zhonghua
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Pei-Kwei
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Tsay
authors.forename: Tiffany
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: I-Chang
authors.initials: IC
authors.lastname: Hsieh
authors.forename: Chun-Chi
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Ming-Shien
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Wen
authors.forename: Yung-Liang
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Wan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002114:Calcinosis; D002118:Calcium / Q000378:metabolism; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology*; D003331:Coronary Vessels / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D064847:Multimodal Imaging; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
chemical_list: D002118:Calcium