Coronary Arterial Calcium and Outcomes

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Identifying individuals at risk for cardiovascular events facilitates the earlier initiation of preventive therapies of at-risk individuals. While many risk scores and algorithms aimed at identifying individuals at increased risk for events are commonly used in clinical practice, their ability to correctly identify individuals who will experience a cardiovascular event is limited. Coronary artery calcium scoring is a noninvasive method of quantifying the burden of coronary atherosclerosis and has been demonstrated to improve the risk prediction of individuals above and beyond traditional risk factors.