Abstract
BACKGROUND: The prevalence of traditional cardiovascular risk factors shows different age-specific patterns. It is not known whether the prognostic impact of risk factors is similarly age-specific. We evaluated the profiles of cardiovascular risk factors and their prognostic impact on coronary artery disease (CAD) in relation to age. METHODS: We included 3667 patients with suspected or known CAD undergoing stress myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI). We evaluated the risk for major adverse cardiac events (MACE) within three years from the index MPI in patients belonging to three groups according to age tertile distribution: <59, 59-68, and >68 years. Gender, body mass index, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, family history of CAD, smoking, angina, dyspnea, previous CAD, and MPI outcome were assessed as risk factors by a multivariable Cox's regression. RESULTS: The three-year risk of MACE increased progressively with age and was 9%, 13%, and 18% for each group, respectively (p < 0.0001). Dyspnea and abnormal MPI outcome were significant risk factors for all age groups. Diabetes and smoking were significant from the age of 59 onwards, while hypertension resulted significant for patients older than 68 years. CONCLUSIONS: The number of risk factors was significantly associated with the occurrence of MACE increase with age. It is noteworthy that a personal history of CAD was not useful for risk stratification, while MPI results were.