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Antithrombotic Therapy for Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Risk Mitigation in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease and Diabetes Mellitus Comparison of one-year clinical outcomes between intravascular ultrasound-guided versus angiography-guided implantation of drug-eluting stents for left main lesions: a single-center analysis of a 1,016-patient cohort Cardiovascular Events Associated With SGLT-2 Inhibitors Versus Other Glucose-Lowering Drugs: The CVD-REAL 2 Study Comparison of plaque characteristics in narrowings with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), non-STEMI/unstable angina pectoris and stable coronary artery disease (from the ADAPT-DES IVUS Substudy) Second vs. First generation drug eluting stents in multiple vessel disease and left main stenosis: Two-year follow-up of the observational, prospective, controlled, and multicenter ERACI IV registry Long-term outcomes with use of intravascular ultrasound for the treatment of coronary bifurcation lesions Prior Pacemaker Implantation and Clinical Outcomes in Patients With Heart Failure and Preserved Ejection Fraction Echocardiographic Screening for Pulmonary Hypertension in Congenital Heart Disease: JACC Review Topic of the Week The Evolution of β-Blockers in Coronary Artery Disease and Heart Failure (Part 1/5) The Future of Biomarker-Guided Therapy for Heart Failure After the Guiding Evidence-Based Therapy Using Biomarker Intensified Treatment in Heart Failure (GUIDE-IT) Study

EditorialOctober 2017, Volume 10, Issue 10

JOURNAL:Circ Cardiovasc Imaging. Article Link

High-Risk Coronary Atherosclerosis Is It the Plaque Burden, the Calcium, the Lipid, or Something Else?

Akiko Maehara, Gregg W. Stone Keywords: calcium death, sudden, cardiac, humans risk factors

ABSTRACT

Cardiac death and myocardial infarction usually result from thrombotic occlusion of a coronary artery with underlying atherosclerotic plaque. Histologically, most underlying plaques that have resulted in sudden cardiac death or myocardial infarction because of coronary thrombosis (vulnerable plaque) are ruptured thin-cap fibroatheromas with large plaque burden and a lipid-rich necrotic core. Second most common are erosions of proteoglycan-rich plaques with thrombosis, despite an intact fibrous cap. The extent that macroscopic or microscopic calcification contributes to plaque instability and thrombosis is controversial. Both fibroatheromas and erosion-prone plaques may be calcified and, occasionally, an isolated calcified nodule has been associated with coronary thrombosis. Using noninvasive and invasive imaging techniques, new in vivo insights into the role of calcification in patient and plaque vulnerability are emerging. The computed tomography (CT)-derived coronary artery calcium score (CACS) accounts for the area and the maximum density of each detected calcium deposit in the entire coronary tree and has proven useful in predicting future cardiovascular events in asymptomatic patients at intermediate risk. CT angiography has demonstrated that hypolucent plaques with positive remodeling or a napkin-ring sign predict future cardiac death, myocardial infarction, or acute coronary syndromes (ACS; patient-level analysis). Finally, prospective intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) studies have shown that a large plaque burden, small minimal lumen area (MLA), and composition consistent with a thin-cap fibroatheroma by radiofrequency analysis identifies those plaques that are likely to cause future adverse cardiovascular events (lesion-level analysis). In this regard, coronary calcification has been correlated with plaque burden but not luminal stenosis. Reconciling these differences, especially the apparent discordance between plaque burden, coronary calcium, and lipid as risk factors is a matter of importance.