Coronary calcification score: the coronary-risk impact factor

Context Identification of asymptomatic high-risk individuals is integral to current policies for preventing coronary heart disease, but existing methods of estimating risk lack, sensitivity. To overcome this limitation increasing use is being made of non-invasive methods to detect subclinical coronary artery disease-eg, computed tomography (CT) to scan for coronary artery calcification. The location and extent of calcification correlate closely with pathological and angiographic abnormalities, but whether such calcification predicts clinical events, especially in younger individuals, is equivocal. Most data on coronary calcification have been obtained with electron-beam CT, but :recently multislice CT, which is more versatile, less expensive, and available in most large hospitals, has been increasingly used.