Newly discovered symptom that accurately predicts who will have a heart attack in the next two years

A new study conducted by scientists at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City (USA) found that proportion from calcium in the coronary artery are not only very effective in identifying those at risk of future heart attacks, but also death, and it has been found that risk forecasting was so good at women like men.

Coronary artery calcium (CAC) assessment has become a non-invasive way for doctors to easily determine how much plaque has accumulated in a patient’s coronary arteries, but questions have arisen about its accuracy for assessing coronary artery calcium (CAC) levels. predict heart attack or death in men and women.

These tests are noninvasive, use as little radiation as mammography, and are relatively inexpensive, especially compared to PET stress tests, coronary CT angiography, or coronary angiography.

Findings from the Intermountain Health study showed that, in addition to predicting the risk of death from coronary causes and nonfatal heart attacks, coronary artery calcium levels also correlated with all-cause mortality. Researchers have found that people with levels zero calcium they had three times less likely to die from any cause.

“Coronary artery calcium levels are an excellent and accurate indicator of overall health and prognosis, even beyond cardiovascular disease,” he says. Jeffrey L. AndersonPrincipal Investigator of the study and Distinguished Physician Researcher at Intermountain Health.

For the study, the researchers analyzed patients’ electronic medical records. 19,495 women and 20,523 men who had a PET/CT scan because doctors suspected they were at risk for cardiovascular disease, but who had not yet had a cardiac event, such as a heart attack.

Of these patients, 7967 had a CAC score of zero, meaning they They did not have calcified plaque in the coronary arteries. In this group, women were older on average than men (60.5 years for women, 53.8 for men), which correlates with the fact that women tend to develop heart disease later in life than men.

The researchers did follow-up of patients after approximately two years and found that a CAC score of zero predicted a low risk of coronary death or nonfatal heart attacks in both men and women.

CAC scores of zero were more common in women, despite a higher mean age. They found that people with zero CAC had a three-fold lower risk of death from any cause or heart attack in both sexes.

The ability of the CAC score to predict all-cause mortality is novel and merits further study. “We will continue to research this topic to better understand why zero calcium levels are such a good sign for overall health,” Anderson said.