Publications by authors named "Kathleen Rapelje"
Objective: Epicardial fat is associated with cardiovascular risk factors and adverse outcomes. However, it is not clear if epicardial fat remains to be a mortality risk when coronary calcium score (CAC) is taken into account.
Methods: We studied the 1005 participants from the St.
Article Synopsis
- Coronary CT angiography (CCTA) is effective in identifying coronary plaques, particularly those with high-risk features, and has been validated against optical coherence tomography (OCT).
- In a study of 188 plaques and 84 normal sections, CCTA demonstrated high sensitivity (92%) and specificity (98%) for detecting plaques identified by OCT.
- The primary limitation of CCTA was its inability to detect very small plaques (sub-millimeter), which could represent early atherosclerosis, with misclassification issues contributing to false negatives in mixed plaques.
CTA Detection of Left Atrial Stasis and Thrombus in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation.
Pacing Clin Electrophysiol
December 2016
Background: We investigated computed tomography (CT) angiography (CTA) in assessment of left atrial appendage (LAA) stasis and thrombus in preprocedural evaluation for atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation in a large community cohort.
Methods And Results: We reviewed CTA and transesophageal echocardiographic images obtained in 861 consecutive patients with a history of AF undergoing same-day CTA and transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE) before AF ablation at a single hospital (2006-2013). CTA findings of LAA filling defects from acquisitions without electrocardiogram gating were compared to TEE features of LAA stasis (grade 0-4) and thrombus.