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The Year in Cardiovascular Medicine 2020: Coronary Prevention: Looking back on the Year in Cardiovascular Medicine for 2020 in the field of coronary prevention is Professor Ramon Estruch, Dr Luis Ruilope, and Professor Francesco Cosentino. Mark Nicholls meets them Comprehensive comparative effectiveness and safety of first-line antihypertensive drug classes: a systematic, multinational, large-scale analysis Outcomes in patients treated with ticagrelor or clopidogrel after acute myocardial infarction: experiences from SWEDEHEART registry Impact of bleeding during dual antiplatelet therapy in patients with coronary artery disease Stress Echocardiography and PH: What Do the Findings Mean? Intravascular Imaging and 12-Month Mortality After Unprotected Left Main Stem PCI: An Analysis From the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society Database Rationale and design of a prospective substudy of clinical endpoint adjudication processes within an investigator-reported randomised controlled trial in patients with coronary artery disease: the GLOBAL LEADERS Adjudication Sub-StudY (GLASSY) Membrane type 1 matrix metalloproteinase promotes LDL receptor shedding and accelerates the development of atherosclerosis Feasibility and efficacy of the ultrashort side branch dedicated balloon in coronary bifurcation stenting Inhibition of Platelet Aggregation After Coronary Stenting in Patients Receiving Oral Anticoagulation

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.