New technology can prevent heart attack risk years before it happens

Researchers have developed a new technology that can warn patients that they may have a life-threatening heart attack for years to come.

The new biomarker called Fat Attenuation Index (FAI) is based on the analysis of coronary angiograms by computed tomography (CT), imaging tests on arteries feeding the blood into blood.

Heart attacks are often the result of inflamed patches in the coronary artery that suddenly block blood that reaches the heart.

Knowing which plaques are most likely to cause dangerous blockages and which patients should receive more aggressive treatments is essential for predicting life-threatening cardiovascular events.

Oxford Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine Charalambos Antoniades and his colleagues have developed a technology to detect inflamed plaques that can cause heart attacks by analyzing CT images of fats around the arteries.

Researchers have shown that the most dangerous plates release chemical messengers that modify the surrounding fat.

In a study of the fat attenuation index, researchers involved 3,900 patients followed for 10 years after CT coronography.

Antoniades and his colleagues discovered that FAI technology was able to predict fatal heart attacks many years before they occur. The predictive accuracy of the technology has also been shown to be significantly superior to other methods.

The researchers found that people with abnormal AFI were nine times more likely to have a fatal heart attack over the next five years. These patients would be the ideal candidate to receive aggressive medical treatment to prevent cardiac events.

"This new technology could prove transformative in primary and secondary prevention," Antoniades said in a statement issued by Oxford University.

"Knowing who has an increased risk of heart attack could allow us to intervene early enough to prevent it. I expect these biomarkers to become an essential part of the standard CT coronary angiography report in the coming years. "

Figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that about 610,000 people in the United States die of heart disease each year. This number equals one in four deaths in the country. Coronary artery disease is the most common type of heart disease. He is responsible for more than 370,000 deaths a year.

The researchers reported their findings in a study published in The lancet reviewed and presented at the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology in Munich.