- NEW YORK — A new study in the US aims to determine the best method to screen
and evaluate patients who are at risk of developing coronary heart disease and
which patients would benefit from taking a statin medication to lower
cholesterol.
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- A new approach by researchers at Intermountain Health in
Salt Lake City to determining risk and selecting a statin is the use of the
coronary artery calcium (CAC) score which is determined by taking a
low-radiation dose image of the heart using computed tomography (CT) to look
for calcium deposits in plaques in the heart’s coronary arteries.
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- “Our study is now fully enrolled with over 5,600 patients,
and in this abstract for the American College of Cardiology, we wanted to look
at baseline characteristics and differences in statin prescribing
recommendations,” said Jeffrey L. Anderson MD, principal investigator of the
study and distinguished clinical and cardiovascular research physician at
Intermountain Health.
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- “The question is: Can we do a better job in selecting people
who need a statin for primary coronary risk reduction by using the coronary
artery calcium score, rather than just putting coronary risk factors into an
equation – that is, is it more effective to use direct imaging evidence of
plaque burden or a risk probability. That’s what we’re aiming to find out,” he
said.
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- The new study was presented at the American College of
Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Sessions meeting in Chicago on Saturday.
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- The results of scoring by their assigned risk assessment
tool were sent in letters to their personal physicians, including whether a
statin was recommended based on a high-risk score.
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- Patients in the two groups in the study were found to have
very similar baseline characteristics. However, researchers found that the rate
of statin medication recommendations were different.
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