Heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and death increase with breast arterial calcification<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter<\/b>
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THURSDAY, March 27, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Automated deep learning-based quantification of breast arterial calcification (BAC) on routine screening mammograms may allow for opportunistic screening for cardiovascular disease events and death in women, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology, held from March 29 to 31 in Chicago.<\/p>\n
Theo Dapamede, M.D., Ph.D., from Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues examined the prognostic value of BAC for adverse cardiovascular disease events and all-cause death in the general population. A deep learning model was built on data from 56,605 women with screening mammograms between 2013 and 2020 and at least five years of follow-up.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that event rates for acute myocardial infarction, stroke, heart failure, or all-cause death significantly increased with BAC level in patients aged younger than 60 years and 60 to 80 years. Compared with patients with BAC <10 mm2<\/sup>, patients with BAC >40 mm2<\/sup> had lower average five-year event-free survival (acute myocardial infarction: 96.8 versus 91.0 percent; stroke: 93.1 versus 83.7 percent; heart failure: 95.7 versus 84.7 percent; death: 95.3 versus 86.4 percent). <\/p>\n “Advances in deep learning and artificial intelligence have made it much more feasible to extract and use more information from images to inform opportunistic screening,” Dapamede said in a statement.<\/p>\n