Retrospective analysis demonstrates elevated cardiac events and malignant progression in women with breast arterial calcification, highlighting the value of mammographic screening.
It's well known that breast arterial calcification is an independent cardiac risk factor for women and can be used as a tool for cardiac screening (via routine mammogram screening for women > 40 years). Retrospective analysis was done at tertiary care cancer center from 2019 Jan - 2023 Dec for all women undergoing mammography, The clinical details were extracted from EMR. Risk factors analyzed were, age, menopausal status, lipid profile, HbA1C, family history, smoking, BMI. The outcomes analyzed were degree of calcification, >/= BIRADS 4, coronary disease and any cardiac event. 3897 mammograms with the baseline data were analyzed during this period out of which 763 subjects were available for follow-up. Of these, 298 subjects had some calcifications and 87 had breast arterial calcifications. While younger age and pre-menopausal status were associated with greater cardiac risk compared to the older women with same calcifications, the difference was not statistically significant. However, the cardiac risk was higher in women with breast arterial calcification along with following risk factors.Table: 170PHbA1cTotal cholesterolLDLVLDLHDLSmokingBMI - HFamily H/OP Value0.020.070.030.040.010.030.020.04Odds ratio0.230.741.230.760.934.23.12.2 Open table in a new tab Similarly, those with BIRADS 4 and above quickly progressed to BIRADS 5 in 3 years' time, in cases where women had arterial calcifications along with two or more risk factors (P=0.03). The cardiac events happened 2.6 times (OR) more frequently in women with breast arterial calcification with similar risk factors making it an independent risk factor in multivariate analysis (P=0.04). Peripheral arterial calcifications have a higher risk of malignant potential and CAD compared to central calcifications. It is worth studying the degree, progression, and type of breast arterial calcifications in all mammograms. Those women with any conventional risk factors along with breast arterial calcifications have a higher risk of developing cardiac event and also shall have higher risk of malignant transformation.
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Razdan et al. (2024) studied this question.
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