This CAC calculator application may help clinicians interpret their patients' CAC scores and determine those that will in the future reach CAC thresholds associated with unfavourable risk, such as a CAC score of 400.
It therefore may help patient communication, when the physician and the patient can evaluate together the patient's individual course of CAC-progression, which may improve patient adherence to risk factor modifications via lifestyle changes.
It may also be used to plan the time schedule for a second CAC measurement, which can disclose whether patient adherence to risk factor modification and medication have slowed down CAC progression, or whether progression of coronary artery calcification is faster than expected from the natural course.
It must be noted that the tool so far is based on data from a Caucasian, urban population in Germany. Other populations may follow different percentiles and therefore the application should be used with adequate caution.
The present prediction tool is based on an underlying exponential relation between CAC and age. Accuracy of predictions decreases with increasing time between measurement and prediction, and absolute deviations between predicted and measured CAC tend to increase with predicted CAC.
Predictions made using this application cannot replace clinical judgment based on patient examination and clinical guidelines.
This application is freeware.
The implementation is based on the publication:
Value of Progression of Coronary Artery Calcification for Risk Prediction of Coronary and Cardiovascular
Events - Result of the Heinz Nixdorf Recall (HNR) study
© 2017 Rauwolf 1, Lehmann 2, Mahabadi 3, Erbel 2
1 Central IT, 2 Institute for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology
3 West-German Heart Center Essen
University Duisburg-Essen, Germany