Clinical InvestigationImaging and Diagnostic TestingPredictive value of coronary calcifications for future cardiac events in asymptomatic individuals
Section snippets
Study protocol
The research protocol was approved by the local clinical institutional review board and complies with the declaration of Helsinki. We examined 3078 consecutive patients referred to the outpatient department of our hospital by a primary care physician for preventive cardiological examination between 1997 and 1999. All patients underwent clinical examination, ECG, stress ECG, and echocardiography. Of these patients, 1515 patients either showed typical clinical symptoms of CAD or were suspected of
Results
Of the 1813 initially included patients, 1726 individuals (1018 men and 708 women, age 57.7 ± 13.3 years) completed the follow-up. Nineteen patients who did not complete the follow-up died of noncardiac causes. The mean observation time was 40.3 ± 7.3 months. The distribution of cardiovascular risk factors is shown in Table I. The mean number of risk factors per person was 2.7 ± 1.3 in men and 2.5 ± 1.1 in women (range 0-5) (Table I). There was no difference in age, risk factor distribution,
Discussion
The aim of this study was to evaluate the possibility of identifying the patient at risk for future cardiovascular events by determination of coronary calcification. Furthermore, the results were compared with conventional risk stratification using the PROCAM, ATP III, and ESC risk scores.
The study population consisted of solely asymptomatic patients selected from a group of patients referred to our hospital for preventive cardiological examinations. This preselection explains the higher number
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