Published in:
01-06-2013 | Cardiac Computed Tomography (TC Villines and S Achenbach, Section Editors)
Comparative Effectiveness of Risk Markers for Cardiovascular Risk Assessment in Intermediate-Risk Individuals: Coronary Artery Calcium vs “The Rest”?
Authors:
Andreas S. Barth, Thura T. Abd, Roger S. Blumenthal, Michael J. Blaha
Published in:
Current Cardiovascular Imaging Reports
|
Issue 3/2013
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Abstract
The last decade has seen the emergence of a multitude of novel risk markers for coronary heart disease (CHD), ranging from genetic markers to serum biomarkers and imaging studies. Comparison between different risk markers has been historically difficult because of the paucity of high quality prospective studies evaluating these candidate risk markers side by side in the same population. In the last 2 years, several population based cohorts like MESA, Rotterdam, EISNER, and the Heinz Nixdorf Recall study have provided new data enabling assessment of comparative effectiveness for several of these risk markers. In this review, we evaluate evidence from these 4 large cohort studies regarding the relative improvement in the net reclassification index (NRI) among intermediate-risk patients. We conclude that CAC is the strongest marker for clinical risk prediction and is the most likely to positively influence downstream clinical outcomes.