Traditional cardiovascular risk factors and severity of angiographic coronary artery disease in the elderly.

Over 80% of annual coronary heart disease mortality occurs in the elderly, a rapidly expanding subset of the population. The authors retrospectively examined the relationship between traditional cardiovascular risk factors and atherosclerotic coronary artery disease burden in a cohort of 631 elderly patients undergoing angiography. Age and male sex but not hypertension or dyslipidemia were predictors of presence of obstructive coronary artery disease (Duke score >or=2). Only diabetes mellitus emerged as an independent predictor of obstructive coronary artery disease burden. Smoking was found to be predictive of left main coronary artery disease. In summary, severity of angiographic disease in the elderly as assessed by Duke Myocardial Jeopardy scoring appears to correlate poorly with prevalence of established traditional cardiovascular risk factors. (c) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.