CT Evaluation of Cardiovascular Risk Markers in Obese Patients

Overview

Obesity is a chronic metabolic disorder : it leads to coronary heart disease and early atherosclerosis. Coronary artery calcium measured by CT is known as a robust predictor to predict risk for cardiac events in symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. Furthermore, recent studies show that other CT risk factor exists, independent of calcium scoring, such as epicardial fat, intrathoracic fat and visceral fat. The aim of this prospective study is to evaluate these new cardiovascular risk markers in obese patients, using standard dose CT and low dose CT with adaptative statistical iterative reconstruction.

In this prospective single-center study, obese patients of our clinical nutrition service, hospitalized for nutritional assessement, are included. All unenhanced coroCT examinations are performed on the same 64-Row CT scanner (discovery CT 750 HD scanner, GE Healthcare), using prospective ECG-triggerring. The investigation protocol began with a standard-dose acquisition followed immediately by a low-dose acquisition, recorded over strictly identical segments (identical first and last sections). After these two examinations, estimated dose values are less than the diagnostic scan reference level for a coroCT.

Conditions