Diagnosis of the diseased coronary vessel by calcium score in patients with chest pain.

Introduction: coronary artery disease is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. A valuable tool for its diagnosis is calcium score by cardiac tomography. Objective: to describe the results of the use of calcium scoring in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease. Methods: a cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out at the Cardiocentro "Ernesto Che Guevara" of Santa Clara in 2019. The population consisted of 820 patients with chest pain attended at the tomography service and the sample consisted of 246 patients selected by simple random sampling. A request for informed consent was made and anamnesis, physical examination and coronary calcium score were performed. In the statistical analysis, the Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare the variables describing the calcium score in the four coronary vessels and the Mann-Whitney U test (penalized by the Bonferroni method). Results: 61.4% of those investigated were over 60 years of age, 65.9% were male, 78.1% had some risk factor and arterial hypertension was the most frequent (68.7%). The most common diagnosis was multivessel disease (42.28%) and the anterior descending artery was the most affected (41.46%). There were significant differences between the mean ranges for the number of lesions in the vessels with a median of three for the anterior descending and right coronary arteries. Conclusion: the calcium score was able to diagnose coronary vessel disease in the majority of patients with chest pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]