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Okay, this next patient is a nice example of

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moderate disease. He's a patient who

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has a history of heart failure and came to the Ed with

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chest pain 51 years old and actually had

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a triple rule out examination, which we do

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on occasion. So you'll notice the case actually has in addition

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to the usual coronary CT images. There are some chest images

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as well.

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Obtained as part of the triple lot study.

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So we're going to focus on the corners UT portion of that study, though.

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So if we start from the top

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and scroll down you're going to see here's the left main

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nice big left main with no real disease.

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And then you see that there's a try forcation actually

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into an LED, which is heading right here.

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A ramus which is heading right here pretty decent size vessel which

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and with a little bit of calcium and then a circumflex, which

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is heading downward.

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And if we looked at a myth, you can actually appreciate that maybe a little

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better the traffication there one two, three vessels, right?

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So that's a try application.

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Now let's focus on the LED. We come

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down the LED and boom. We see this non calcified plaque. Now.

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There's also a little tiny bit of calcification there and

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I'm gonna zoom up on that.

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And you could maybe even argue that

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this is a spotty calcification. Remember we talked about those high-risk black

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features earlier.

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Spotty classification is when you have non-calcify black

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with a little bit of calcium centrally.

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And then as we go down further in the LED, you see

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contrast a little bit of calcium here.

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a little Flex of calcium here and there

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a small diagonal branch

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a couple other flecks of calcium

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some more calcium

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a decent size maybe moderate diagonal Branch there and

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then the LED looks

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Fine down towards the Apex you'll find

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if you realize coronary CT the majority of the patients. The disease

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is really

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proximal to Mid vessel for the led the

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Cirque certainly also approximal and

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mid vessels most commonly involved for the RCA adult and

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you'll find pretty much the entire vessel may be involved. So

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in this case now, we're going to look at the ramus on the

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excellent images. We see the ramus comes off here a little Fleck of

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calcium, but nothing that looks really particularly concerning

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there and the circumflex here you

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can see there's a nice hunk of

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calcium here, but next to what you've got quite a

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bit of lumen and if you window really wide that calcium

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Although it looks quite large. There's still quite a

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lot of luma next to it. So I'm not too worried about that being a severe lesion.

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another bit of calcium here, which looks

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Substantial in terms of size but there's quite a

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lot of lumen next to it as well. So I'm not too worried about that either and

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then the obtuse marginal here looks like it's free

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of disease.

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and then finally

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Where the RCA?

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Approximately here right at the origin that looks fine. And then

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soon after the origin though. We get this tapered narrowing

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right there.

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It's hard to tell really on the axial images,

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but I suspect there might be some non-calify plaque in this region

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so out take a look at that on the CPR images.

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And then as we go more distally we see a little

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Fleck of calcium here.

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With maybe some non calcified plaque around

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it, but quite a nice large column of

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contrast next to it. So I'm not to worry about that being a significant stenosis.

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And then when we go down further in

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the RCA can see this kind of caliber change. It's sort

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of

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some irregularities of a lumen

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is how we would usually describe that without any severe stenosis.

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And then the PDA here as a small vessel, but

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looks okay.

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So we know we've got some proximal RCA disease

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and some at least proximal to Mid LED disease

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which looks concerning. I think the Circ disease is probably

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going to be okay, but we'll have to take a look at that as well.

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So we go to our curve planar images.

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Here's our LED.

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And right away, I think it stands out pretty quickly that

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you've got this stenosis here. And so this stenosis

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is one of the it's sort of a classic appearance of

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a moderate stenosis.

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You know somewhere in that 50 to 60% range.

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Got quite a bit of narrowing but you

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still have a decent amount of contrast that's getting through. So this

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would be considered a moderate stenosis.

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Not in that 70 plus category but in that 50

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to 60 percent range.

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Downstream looks like you've got maybe a little bit more mild disease

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from some non-classified black here

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and some maybe a non calcified plaque with a

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spotty calcification here.

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I think these are more mild because I see much sort of more substantial.

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column of contrast going past these lesions

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This one is maybe borderline, but I think probably

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still less than 50% But certainly

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this proximate one is the most severe.

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now if we go on to the circumflex

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And we've always want to window really wide to make

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that calcium small as possible and you'll

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notice that we've got quite a bit disease here along

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the circumflex, but the Lumen looks preserved.

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Right the Lumen from here through here really

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looks fairly preserved without significant little

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narrowing we have disease, but we have positive remodeling

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that results in very little narrowing.

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So I think the circumflex overall.

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Is mild disease may be here distally. It's

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approaching something a little bit more moderate on some views, but

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I think

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the overall impression is that it looks like it's mild disease.

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And then finally the RCA.

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This is a nice example in the RCA of a moderate stenosis

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as well from non-calcified plaque in the

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proximal RCA. So you can see you've got normal looking

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segment of the vessel here and then it tapers down

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to about 50% Maybe, you know,

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approaching 60% stenosis right here at the

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level of this non-calcified plaque.

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So this is an again a nice example of moderate stenosis.

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And then more distally you've got really what looks

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like kind of a classic example of a

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spotty calcification right here. Let

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me zoom up on that which is where you have non calcified

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plaque with a little Central bright Dot from

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calcification. That's that's a body classification.

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But you don't see anything against stenosis.

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And then if we look at the rest of the RCA, we have a pretty continuous.

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Vessel Lumen without much narrowing, maybe a

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little bit of narrowing here just to leave. It's the vessel gets quite

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small. And so I don't think there's a significant at least

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not greater than mild stenosis. They're just

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Putting it all together. We've got mild disease

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in the circumflex and then moderates stenoses

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in the proximal RCA and in

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the proximal LED, so this patient when they fall into

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this moderate category, that's sort of a gray Zone as

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to whether they're, you know symptoms are related to coronary

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disease.

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Most likely two vessels with

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modern disease. You're not going to have any significant. Ischemia, but

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depending on how concerned they are about this patient. They may

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order some sort of stress testing to work

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them up.

Report

Faculty

Stefan Loy Zimmerman, MD

Associate Professor of Radiology and Radiological Science

Johns Hopkins Medicine Department of Radiology and Radiological Science

Tags

Vascular

Cardiac

CT

Acquired/Developmental