Aortic valve calcification predicts all-cause mortality independent of coronary calcification and severe stenosis

Abstract

valve calcification (AVC) is predictive of mortality after adjustment for cardiovascular risk, aortic stenosis (AS), and coronary artery calcification (CAC), in patients with history of smoking.• AVC is also predictive of nonfatal myocardial infarction and nonfatal cerebrovascular accident in this population.• There is prognostic value in reporting AVC from low dose lung cancer screening computed tomography.

Aortic Valve Calcification Is Associated with Future Cognitive Impairment

“…In conclusion, scoring AVC derived from LCSCT may be helpful at identifying risk of future CI in patient populations with CAVD and a high risk of atherosclerotic vascular disease. Previous studies have shown that both CAC and AVC derived from non-ECG-gated CT have strong agreement with CAC and AVC derived from ECG-gated CT [ 8, 16 ]. Thus, reporting AVC from LCSCT may help physicians identify patients who would benefit from more aggressive cardiovascular care, including early forms of vascular dementia.…”

“…The kappa for interobserver agreement was 0.91 (0.85–0.95) and 0.92 (0.88–0.96) for AVC and CAC, respectively. As described elsewhere, there was a strong Pearson correlation between AVC from non-ECG-gated and ECG-gated CT acquisition protocols [ 8, 16 ].…”

“…Aortic valve calcification may be a prognostic indicator for atherosclerotic processes affecting various vascular beds, including those associated with the central nervous system [ 8 ]; however, the one prior study assessing the relationship between AVC and CI did not demonstrate a significant association [ 12 ]. Here we identify that AVC, as a continuous variable, is associated with CI in patients with an extensive smoking history.…”

“…Our group recently found aortic valve calcification (AVC) to be independently associated with increased atherosclerotic events, including all-cause mortality, nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI), and nonfatal CVA, despite a very weak correlation between AVC and coronary calcification [ 8 ]. Other groups have demonstrated the presence of AVC to be associated with covert brain infarcts identified on MRI [ 9 ].…”

Coronary artery- and aortic valve calcifications in patients with Philadelphia-negative myeloproliferative neoplasms

“…As for AVC, it has been shown to predict all-cause mortality independently of CACS and severe aortic stenosis, and also predict non-fatal myocardial infarctions and non-fatal cerebrovascular events in a cohort of 1529 individuals with a moderate-to high CVD risk [28]. In a cohort of 6685 participants free of clinical CVD from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, participants with AVC had a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular events and cardiovascular mortality compared to participants with no AVC [29].…”