Autori: Rusu MC, Cuzino D, Dermengiu D, Curca GC, Capatina C, Strambu VDE, Hostiuc S.

Editorial: Rom J Leg Med , 17(4), p.271 - 276, 2009.

Rezumat:

CT coronary calcium scoring (CCS) is a useful test for cardiovascular risk stratification in clinical environment; its usefulness in medical legal practice wasn’t, to our knowledge, tested. In this study we aimed to evaluate whether the CCS method gives satisfactory and relevant results if applied on postmortem cardiac specimens. A postmortem cardiac specimen was evaluated with an Agatston Score of 760,56; on CT slices the exact location of the calcified plaques could only be determined in subepicardial arteries. The consecutive anatomical coronary evaluation of that specimen revealed a strong correlation with the results obtained by CCS – coronary artery (dominant) with 3rd and 4th degree atherosclerosis with luminal narrowing which supplied sinus and atrioventricular nodes, right cardiac chambers and also the inferior wall of the left ventricle. Complementary, the circumflex artery mainly continued as left marginal artery, with only a thin branch distributed on the inferior aspect of the left cardiac border. The herein reported proof-of-method evaluation for legal medicine gave us positive results demonstrating that the CCS can be accurately evaluated in postmortem cardiac specimens. The legal medical usefulness of the imagistic method of coronary calcium scoring appears as a preliminary diagnostic tool mainly in the diagnostic of the unexpected sudden cardiac deaths, supporting a postmortem risk stratification of the specimens and guiding the anatomical and pathological further investigations of the specimens.

Cuvinte cheie: heart, sudden cardiac death, atherosclerosis, coronary calcium scoring, risk stratification

URL: http://www.rjlm.ro/index.php?d=276