Coronary Artery Calcium on Noncontrast Thoracic Computerized Tomography Scans and All-Cause Mortality

Although coronary artery calcium (CAC) has extensive validation for predicting clinical events, little is known about how CAC interacts and predicts mortality in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We evaluated the contribution of CAC to all-cause mortality and assessed the association of CAC with mortality varied by sex, race/ethnicity, and COPD GOLD category (Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease) using the COPDGene study (Genetic Epidemiology of COPD). Smoking is not only the leading cause of lung cancer and COPD, but also a major risk factor for heart disease and associated with significantly higher atherosclerosis burden.1 Smokers are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease (CVD) than lung cancer, which accounted for only 24.1% of all deaths in the National Lung Screening Trial.1 Ungated low-dose multidetector row computerized tomography (CT), which is generally used for the assessment of lung cancer and COPD, can evaluate CAC.2 Assessment of CAC during c...