Article Text
Abstract
Objective Women with suspected angina without history of coronary artery disease (CAD) less frequently have flow-limiting stenosis (FL-CAD) and more often have microvascular disease, affecting predictive accuracy of stress echocardiography (SE) for detection of FL-CAD. We postulated that carotid plaque burden (CPB) assessment would improve detection of FL-CAD and risk stratification.
Methods Consecutive consenting patients assessed by SE on clinical grounds for new-onset chest pain also underwent simultaneous carotid ultrasound. Patients were followed for major adverse events (MAE): all-cause mortality, non-fatal myocardial infarction and unplanned revascularisation. Carotid plaque presence and burden (CPB) were assessed.
Results After a mean of 2617±469 days (range 17–3740), of 591 recruited patients, 573 (97%) outcome data (314 females) were obtainable. Despite lower pretest probability of CAD in females versus males (14.9±0.8 vs 20.5±1.3, respectively, p<0.0001), prevalence of myocardial ischaemia was similar (p=0.08). Females also had lower prevalence of both carotid plaque (p<0.0001) and FL-CAD (p<0.05). CPB improved the positive predictive value of SE for detection of FL-CAD (from 34.5% to 60%) in females but not in males. Absence of CPB in females with myocardial ischaemia ruled out FL-CAD in 93% versus 57% in males. CPB was the only independent predictor of MAE (p=0.012) in females, whereas in males both SE (p<0.0001) and CPB (p=0.003) remained significant.
Conclusion In females with new-onset stable angina without a history of cardiovascular disease, CPB improved the predictive accuracy of myocardial ischaemia for flow-limiting CAD. However, CPB provided incremental risk stratification in both sexes.
- coronary artery disease
- carotid disease
- echocardiography
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Footnotes
Contributors SA: designing and planning, patient recruitment, data collection, data analysis, statistical analysis, draft and final manuscript. JP: data collection, data analysis, draft and final manuscript. RSK: data analysis, draft and final manuscript. RS: designing and planning, conduct of draft and final manuscript, responsible for the overall content.
Funding The Northwick Park Cardiovascular Research department funded this study.
Competing interests RS has received speaker fees/honorarium from Bracco, Milan, Italy, and Philips, Eindhoven, Netherlands.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Ethics approval The local research ethical committee approved the study.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement Data are available upon reasonable request. Protocol, statistical analysis plan and raw data set will be available upon receiving reasonable request.