CHA2DS2-VASc-HS score in non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome patients: assessment of coronary artery disease severity and complexity and comparison to other scoring systems in the prediction of in-hospital major adverse cardiovascular events

Abstract

Objective: We recently described the CHA2DS2-VASc-HS score as a novel predictor of coronary artery disease (CAD) severity in stable CAD patients. We aimed to assess the accuracy of the CHA2DS2-VASc-HS score in the determination of CAD severity and complexity and its availability in the risk stratification of in-hospital major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS) patients.

Methods: We prospectively analyzed the clinical and angiographic data of consecutive NSTE-ACS patients in our clinic. Patients were classified into three tertiles according to their SYNTAX score (SS): tertile 1 had an SS of 0-22; tertile 2 had an SS of 23-32; and tertile 3 had an SS of >32. There were no specific exclusion criteria except for previous coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) because SS was validated for only native coronary arteries for this study. We used the following analyses: χ2 or Fisher's exact tests, one-way analysis of variance or Kruskal-Wallis tests, Pearson's or Spearman's tests, the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis, the area under the curve (AUC) or C-statistic, and pairwise comparisons of the ROC curves.

Results: A total of 252 patients were enrolled. There were 131 patients in tertile 1, 79 in tertile 2, and 42 in tertile 3. The number of diseased vessels was correlated with the Global Registry for Acute Coronary Events (GRACE) (p<0.001), Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) (p<0.001), and CHA2DS2-VASc-HS (p<0.001) scores. In the ROC curve analyses, the cut-off value of the CHA2DS2-VASc-HS score in the prediction of in-hospital MACE was >5 with a sensitivity of 69.6% and specificity of 90.3% (AUC: 0.804, 95%: CI 0.750-0.851, p<0.001). We also compared the diagnostic accuracy of the CHA2DS2-VASc-HS score with the TIMI and GRACE risk scores in the determination of the in-hospital MACE and found no differences.

Conclusion: The CHA2DS2-VASc-HS score was positively correlated with the severity and complexity of CAD. We also found that CHA2DS2-VASc-HS was comparable with other risk scores for the risk stratification of the in-hospital MACE of NSTE-ACS patients. Therefore, it may play an important role as a predictive model of NSTE-ACS patients in clinical practice.

Figure 1

Comparison of ROC curves of the CHA₂DS₂-VASc-HS, TIMI, and GRACE scores in the risk stratification of the in-hospital MACE in NSTE-ACS patients. AUC - area under the curve; CI - confidence interval; MACE - major adverse cardiovascular events; SE - standard error