A real-life correlation between clinical syntax score II and carotid intima-media thickness in patients with stable coronary artery disease

Abstract Background Syntax Score II (SSII) is an update of the established Syntax Score that uses clinical variables such as age, sex, creatinine clearance, left ventricular ejection fraction, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and peripheral arterial disease. Also, it is now already proven that SSII is more powerful predictive tool than SS in patients with complex coronary artery disease. Carotid Intima-Media Thickness (CIMT) is a widely used non-invasive evidence for subclinical or early atherosclerosis and it was proved to be an independent predictor for cardiovascular events. Most of the previously published articles studied the association between the CIMT with old cardiovascular scoring systems such as Syntax Score I and Gensini Score with debatable data about their correlation. Aim To study the correlation between SSII and CIMT in stable coronary artery disease (CAD) patients undergoing elective coronary angiography (CA). Method and patients A prospective study including 155 patients undergoing elective CA for stable CAD excluding patients with history of acute coronary syndrome (ACS), previous coronary revascularization either by percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and previous cerebrovascular stroke (CVS). Results The mean age of patients of 58.25 ±16.46 years, 79 patients (50.96%) were males. The mean SSII score was 10.23 ±11.36 and mean CIMT was 0.85 ±0.24. The correlation between SSII and CIMT using Spearman correlation showed a strong correlation between SSII score and CIMT with correlation coefficient r= 0.752. Conclusion The study showed a strong positive correlation between SSII and CIMT in stable CAD patients undergoing elective CA.