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Long-term safety and effectiveness of unprotected left main coronary stenting with drug-eluting stents compared with bare-metal stents Unprotected Left Main Disease: Indications and Optimal Strategies for Percutaneous Intervention Angiographic versus functional severity of coronary artery stenoses in the FAME study fractional flow reserve versus angiography in multivessel evaluation Real-world clinical utility and impact on clinical decision-making of coronary computed tomography angiography-derived fractional flow reserve: lessons from the ADVANCE Registry Influence of Heart Rate on FFR Measurements: An Experimental and Clinical Validation Study Changes in Coronary Plaque Composition in Patients With Acute Myocardial Infarction Treated With High-Intensity Statin Therapy (IBIS-4): A Serial Optical Coherence Tomography Study Diagnosis of ischemia-causing coronary stenoses by noninvasive fractional flow reserve computed from coronary computed tomographic angiograms. Results from the prospective multicenter DISCOVER-FLOW EHRA/EAPCI expert consensus statement on catheter-based left atrial appendage occlusion – an update OCT compared with IVUS in a coronary lesion assessment: the OPUS-CLASS study A prediction model of simple echocardiographic variables to screen for potentially correctable shunts in adult patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension associated with atrial septal defects: a cross-sectional 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.