Risk Factors of Coronary Calcium Onset in Healthy Japanese Individuals: A Longitudinal Study Using Low-Dose Chest CT

Abstract

Low-dose CT lung cancer screening has been reported to reduce mortality by 20% compared to single-view posteroanterior chest radiography [1]. Also, the amount of coronary artery calcification (CAC) measured by electrocardiography (ECG)gated CT reflects arteriosclerosis [2] and is a strong predictor of coronary artery disease (CAD), cardiovascular events, and allcause mortality, above and beyond the Framingham risk score [3-5]. In a recent study, CAC on standard chest CT correlated well with that on ECG-gated CT and was linked to mortality risk [6]. In addition, in patients undergoing CT lung cancer screening, the assessment of coronary calcification has been successfully performed using low-dose chest CT. Results had excellent correlation with ECG-gated coronary calcium score [7-9]. The procedure had good sensitivity and specificity and showed overall accuracy [10]. The amount of CAC is an independent prognostic factor for heart disease [4,11-13]. If the amount of CAC is 0, atherosclerotic lesions including vulnerable plaques can be ruled out with a high probability [12,14]. However, the onset of CAC and the related factors in healthy individuals are not well understood. The aim of this study was to quantify CAC using low-dose chest CT, longitudinally performed cc This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CVIA Risk Factors of Coronary Calcium Onset in Healthy Japanese Individuals: A Longitudinal Study Using Low-Dose Chest CT