Original investigationIs coronary artery calcium mass related to Agatston score?1
Section snippets
Subject selection
Eighty-three subjects (60 men and 23 women) who were referred to our clinical CT screening program for the detection and quantification of coronary artery calcifications were included. The study protocol was approved by our institutional review committee, and the subjects gave informed consent. All subjects were asymptomatic and with no histories of coronary stents, cardiac pacemakers, or cardiac surgery. The age of the subjects ranged from 45 to 78 years with a mean of 57 ± 10 years; the mean
Results
Coronary CT screening was successful in all 83 subjects. Fifty-one subjects (36 males, 15 females) had at least one measurable calcified lesion. The ranges of calcium score and mass in the subjects were 1.3 to 3034.4 and 0.2 to 400.9 mg, respectively. There were 328 lesions detected and measured. The ranges for the lesions’ calcium score and mass were 0.3 to 603.0 and 0.1 to 88.1 mg, respectively. The means, SDs, and medians of the score and mass in the subjects and lesions are listed in Table 1
Discussion
Given the epidemic of coronary artery disease afflicting our aging population, it is important not only to understand the pathobiology of calcified vasculopathy, but also to develop and validate noninvasive imaging techniques that can detect and quantify calcification in coronary arteries. The Agatston score method has been the standard approach for the quantification of coronary artery calcium. In recent years, however, coronary calcium mass quantitative method has attracted a growing
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