Roger S Blumenthal, Jelani Grant, Seamus P Whelton
J Am Coll Cardiol . 2023 Sep 19;82(12):1203-1205. doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2023.06.039.
In this issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Peng et al1 report on the use of a deep learning algorithm to quantify coronary artery calcium (CAC) from clinically indicated non-electrocardiography (ECG)-gated computed tomography (CT) chest scans. Among the 5,678 participants without known atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), >50% had CAC >0 and 33% had CAC ≥100. However, statin therapy was prescribed for only 19% of individuals with CAC 1 to 99 and 26% of individuals with CAC ≥100. Adjusted hazard modeling showed that individuals with CAC ≥100 had a 63% higher risk of death and nearly two-fold higher risk for the composite outcome of death, myocardial infarction, stroke, or revascularization compared with individuals with CAC = 0.