Echocardiographic Epicardial Fat Thickness on Short Term Prognosis in Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome

Introduction Metabolic syndrome is related to multiple cardiovascular risk factors. Visceral obesity seems to play a key role in the development of all features of metabolic syndrome. Hence, the detection of visceral adipose tissue, fat deposited around the internal organs, might be important for the risk stratification of metabolic syndrome. Several methods are applied as surrogates for estimation of visceral adipose tissue. Epicardial adipose tissue is a visceral fat deposited around the heart, particularly around subepicardial coronary vessels. It may act as an endocrine organ given the production of a comparable pattern of adipocytokines and has been implicated in the development of coronary atherosclerosis. Recent reports have shown that epicardial adipose tissue expresses numerous genes for cytokines and proteins associated with atherosclerosis. Previously, we proposed and validated that epicardial fat thickness was significantly correlated with the severity of coronary artery diseases in patients with known coronary artery disease. We hypothesized that the short term prognosis after acute coronary syndrome (ACS) was related with epicardial fat thickeness. To test this hypothesis, we compared epicardial fat thickness with short term clinical outcome between patients who underwent successful coronary stenting.