Oral Presentation No. 75 Impact of thoracic aortic calcification measured by computed tomography in clinical outcomes in patients undergoing cardiac surgery

Abstract The presence of thoracic aortic calcification (TAC) has been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events. Few studies have evaluated the relationship between CT measured by computed tomography (CT) before cardiac surgery and clinical outcomes, and the relationship is still unclear. This study aimed to analyse the impact on clinical outcomes of the presence of TAC in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. A retrospective unicentre analysis of patients undergoing a noncontrast CT prior to cardiac surgery was performed. TAC was quantified using a volume-rendering method. The percentiles of TAC volume (TACV) were used to determine the relative standing. Demographic data, risk factors and clinical outcomes were comparable between groups. A P-value < 0.05 is statistically significant. The mean TACV was 2.45 ± 2.79 cm3, and the median and 75th percentiles were 1.45 and 4.06 cm3, respectively. Of the total of 121 patients, 26 (21.5%) had high TACV. Table 1 shows the baseline demographic and risk factors. There was no significant difference in risk factors and personal history between groups except for age (P-value = 0.02), hypertension (P-value = 0.04) and coronary artery disease (P-value < 0.01). Regarding clinical outcomes, there was no significant difference in clinical outcomes except for acute kidney failure (P-value = 0.04), which was not significant in multivariate analysis. In conclusion, aortic calcification is a recurrent finding, to which there seems to be a contribution from hypertension-related vascular damage, especially in older ones. In patients undergoing cardiac surgery, TACV appears not to be related to clinical outcomes in multivariate analysis. However, large-scale studies are needed to confirm these results.