Increased Carotid and Brachial Intima-Media Thickness is Related to Diffuse Coronary Involvement Rather Than Focal Lesions
Angiology, 05/30/2012
Clinical Article
Canga A et al. – The findings may be valuable for clarifying the prognostic value of Intima–Media Thickness measurements.
Methods- The authors evaluated whether an increased carotid intima–media thickness (cIMT) and brachial artery IMT (bIMT) are related to diffuse coronary involvement rather than focal lesions.
- Patients (n = 88) with at least 1 significant lesion of the main epicardial coronary arteries (≥50%) were included in the present study.
- The authors used a novel score based on length and mean narrowing of all lesions in order to predict diffuse coronary involvement.
- Both cIMT and bIMT were higher in patients with long coronary lesion than focal lesion (P < .001).
- The patients with long coronary lesion had a higher rate of total coronary involvement than patients with focal lesion (P < .001).
- The cIMT had a higher correlation with total atherosclerotic burden in the coronary vasculature (r = .495, P < .001) and the longest lesion length (r = .489, P < .001) than cardiovascular risk factor score (r = .453, P < .001 and r = .324, P = .012, respectively).
