VIDEO: Patients with high CAC scores should receive secondary prevention therapies
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Key takeaways:
- Coronary artery calcium scoring is helpful for assessing risk in patients who have not yet had a CV event.
- Patients with a CAC score of over 300 should be treated the same as those who have had a heart attack.
PHILADELPHIA — In this Healio video exclusive, Matthew Budoff, MD, FACC, FAHA, discusses a presentation on the benefits of the coronary artery calcium score at the Heart in Diabetes CME Conference.
Budoff, endowed chair of preventive cardiology, professor of medicine and director of cardiac CT at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, gave his perspective on a talk by Michael J. Blaha, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and director of clinical research at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, Johns Hopkins Medicine.
“When do we take [an] asymptomatic population and treat them as aggressively as somebody with known coronary disease?” Budoff said. “If their calcium score is above 300, they are the same risk as an MI survivor and deserve all of the secondary prevention therapies.”
Watch the video for more.
Reference:
- Blaha MJ. Session 3 – Management of ASCVD Circa 2023. Presented at: Heart in Diabetes CME Conference; June 9-11, 2023; Philadelphia.