Prediction of Carotid Artery Stenosis in Candidates of Coronary Artery Bypasses Surgery by A Scoring System.

Background and Objective: Up to 9% of coronary ar-tery bypass grafting (CABG) patients suffer from stroke after the surgery. Although post CABG stroke has multiple etiologies, stenosis of cervical carotid arteries is an important factor. Many studies have evaluated carotid artery stenosis in CABG. Carotid stenosis and its related factors and a new scoring sys-tem for selection of CABG patients for Doppler study are introduced. Materials and methods: 1721 consecutive cases of non-urgent CABG were evaluated for presence of significant carotid stenosis (> 50% stenosis). The asso-ciation of age, sex, hypertension, smoking, diabetes, dislipidemia and left main coronary stenosis with ca-rotid stenosis was evaluated. For introducing a scor-ing method, absence of each related factor was scored by 1 and its presence by 2. The score range for each patient was from 5 (none of related factors) up to 10 (all of related factors). Results: 7% of patients suffered from significant stenosis. Female gender, age more than 55 years old, hypertension, diabetes, and stenosis of left main coronary artery were the related risk factors in uni-variate analysis. A step type analysis revealed patients with score 5 have 98.3% negative predictive value (NPV) for significant stenosis with 96.2% sensitivity and 13.9% specificity. Patients with score 10 have 93.9% NPV for significant stenosis with 99.9% speci-ficity. Conclusion: This scoring system may help for better selection of patients for Doppler study before CABG.