Wednesday, December 3 | 3:10 p.m.-3:20 p.m. | W7-SSCA08-2 | Room E353C
Can quantifying plaque on CT help identify women at high risk of heart disease? Yes -- and especially in women with stable chest pain who might be missed by traditional heart health assessments, according to this study.
Current methods of assessing heart disease underestimate risk in women, noted a team led by Jan Brendel, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Coronary CT angiography (CCTA) offers thorough plaque quantification, but its "sex-specific risk prognostic value remains unclear," the group noted.
Brendel and colleagues conducted a study that included data from the PROMISE trial CCTA arm; of 4,267 patients, 2,199 (51.5%) were women, with a mean age of 62. The group's main finding was that, in women, total and noncalcified plaque burden independently predicted major adverse cardiovascular events (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.27 [p = 0.004] and 1.29 [p = 0.007], respectively); in men, these associations were not significant. In fact, adding plaque burden data to traditional heart disease risk models improved major adverse cardiovascular event prediction in women, from an area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) of 0.71 to an AUC of 0.75 (p = 0.017).
"Quantitative plaque assessment on CCTA improves risk stratification beyond traditional clinical and imaging measures in women with stable chest pain," the group concluded.
