Breast arterial calcification may predict coronary artery calcification

Results of a study presented at the American Roentgen Ray Society Annual Meeting indicated that breast arterial calcification on digital mammography predicted coronary artery calcification in women.Laurie Margolies, MD, FACR, associate professor of radiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and director of breast imaging at Mount Sinai Hospital, and colleagues analyzed 371 women who had a digital mammogram and an unenhanced CT scan performed within 1 year of each other. The researchers identified calcified breast vessels on the mammogram and characterized them by number of vessels involved and length of involvement (less than one-third, one-third to two-thirds, or greater than two-thirds). They also characterized density of involvement as mild (one vessel wall, no increase in density of vessel or both), moderate (increased density of vessel manifested as clouding) or severe (lumen obscured by calcium). They compared those characteristics with ordinal coronary artery calcification (CAC) score.