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Monday, August 24, 2009

What does a Calcium Score of 0 mean?

A recent study took a set out to answer the question: What is the value of a calcium score of 0?

On the basis of the review of more than 85,000 patients, the authors concluded that the absence of coronary artery calcium (CAC) was associated with a very low risk of future cardiovascular events.

In this cohort, 146 of 25,903 patients without CAC (0.56%) had a cardiovascular event during a mean follow-up period of 51 months.

A calcium score of 0 has very good negative predictive value (The negative predictive value is the proportion of patients with negative test results who are correctly diagnosed, also defined as the probability that the patient will not have the disease when restricted to all patients who test negative).

Therefore, in the workup of cardiovascular risk, a calcium score of 0 is a terrific thing.



JACC Img 2009;2:675-688


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