Arterial age provides a convenient transformation of coronary artery calcium (CAC) from Agatston units to age units, to a scale more easily appreciated by both patients and treating physicians. The arterial age for a participant is the age at which the estimated CHD risk (modeled as a function of age) is the same as that for the observed CAC score. Arterial age is then the risk-equivalent of coronary artery calcium. This measure can be considered a more easily understandable version of the CAC score (e.g. you are 55 years old, but your arteries are more consistent with an arterial age of 65 years).
This tool will calculate an estimated arterial age (and 95% confidence interval) given a CAC score input by the user. Optionally, one can also provide the observed age, gender, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, smoking status, systolic blood pressure and use of anti-hypertensive medications and obtain two versions of estimated 10-year CHD risk based on the Framingham (NCEP) point based equations: one using original age, and the other using estimated arterial age. This does not apply to diabetics.
Robyn L. McClelland, PhD, Khurram Nasir, MD, MPH, Matthew Budoff, MD, Roger S. Blumenthal, MD, and Richard A. Kronmal, PhD.
Arterial Age as a Function of Coronary Artery Calcium (from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis [MESA]), Am J Cardiol. 2009 January 1; 103(1): 59–63