الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract In our study, 243 patients who underwent SPECT imaging and their results were normal were subjected to CAC score evaluation for detection of early atherosclerosis with exclusion of patients with high risk for CAD and those with history of previous revascularization. Patients were evaluated for major risk factors of CAD as smoking, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia as well as evaluation of carotid and iliofemoral calcifications. Among the study group, 74.1% had diabetes mellitus, 52.3% were hypertensive, 58.8% had dyslipidemia, 70.4% were smokers.By CAC evaluation, 37.4% of the study group had significant CAC which is used as an indicator of atherosclerosis. The age of the group with significant CACS was 51.4±15.4 years. Sex evaluation revealed insignificant difference between both sexes in the incidence of significant CACS with insignificant difference in the ratio between significant and insignificant CAC scores.However, patients with diabetes mellitus revealed high statistically-significant incidence of significant CACS 4.4 times than non-diabetics. No significant difference was detected on evaluation of CAC in hypertensive patients, smokers, patients with dyslipidemia or aortic calcifications. Importantly, we found high statistically-significant incidence of significant CACS associated with patients with ilio-femoral calcifications 3.65 times more than patients without ilio-femoral calcifications. Conclusion: This study throws light on the importance of diabetes mellitus and ilio-femoral calcifications as early predictors of atherosclerosis even in the absence of significant findings on SPECT scan. |