Purpose: The prognostic power of clinical parameters and imaging parameter in predicting cardiovascular outcome has not been compared in asymptomatic patients.
Method: A total of 5,561 patients who had coronary CT and were followed for longer than 6 months on outpatient basis were included in the analysis. Clinical parameters included in the analysis were total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, creatinine, fasting blood sugar level, hs-CRP, urine microalbumin/creatinine ratio, homocysteine and NT-proBNP. Epicardial stenosis on coronary CT was analyzed as imaging parameter.
Result: Of the total population, 3,3,87 (60.9%) patients were male. The prevalence of hypertension, diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia were 29.8%, 18.8% and 11.8%. Coronary CT showed epicardial stenosis of greater than 50% in 299 (5.4%) patients. When patients were grouped according to the degree of epicardial stenosis, 4,027 (72.4%) patients had no epicardial stenosis, 1,118 (20.1%) patients had less than 50% stenosis, 225 (4.0%) patients had 50-70% stenosis or left main lesion of less than 50%, and 146 (2.6%) patients had greater than 70% epicardial stenosis or greater than 50% left main disease. During mean follow up period of 681±315 days, 347 (6.2%) patients had cardiovascular events, with mean time to event of 663±475 days. Clinical events which included cardiac death, acute coronary syndrome, and admission due to any other heart problem such as heart failure, were present in 348 (6.3%) patients. From receiving operator curves, epicardial stenosis from coronary CT showed greatest area under curve for predicting clinical events (Table).
Conclusion: The degree of epicardial stenosis, an imaging parameter from coronary CT, showed best predictive value in predicting cardiovascular outcome, when compared to clinical parameters.
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