Washington, Sep 25 (Inditop.com) It may now be possible to image plaques that are most likely to cause sudden, unexpected adverse cardiac events, based on results from a broad-based trial.
The trial, ‘Providing Regional Observations to Study Predictors of Events in the Coronary Tree (PROSPECT)’, is the first prospective natural history study of atherosclerosis (plaque build-up inside the arteries) using multi-modality imaging to characterise the coronary tree.
“As a result of the PROSPECT trial, we are closer to being able to predict – and therefore prevent – sudden, unexpected adverse cardiac events,” said principal investigator Gregg W. Stone, professor of medicine at Columbia University Hospital.
The multi-centre trial studied 700 patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) using three (multi-modal) kinds of imaging, angiography, intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and virtual histology, to quantify factors that place patients at risk for unexpected or fatal cardiovascular events.
Among the discoveries are that most untreated plaques that cause unexpected heart attacks are not mild lesions, (localised pathological change in a bodily organ or tissue) as previously thought, but actually have a large plaque burden.
These are characteristics that were invisible to the coronary angiogram but easily identifiable by IVUS, says a Columbia release.
