TY - JOUR T1 - Outcomes in patients with a first episode of chest pain undergoing early coronary CT imaging JF - Heart JO - Heart SP - 1361 LP - 1368 DO - 10.1136/heartjnl-2021-319747 VL - 108 IS - 17 AU - Klaske R Siegersma AU - N Charlotte Onland-Moret AU - Yolande Appelman AU - Pim van der Harst AU - Igor I Tulevski AU - G Aernout Somsen AU - Jagat Narula AU - Hester M den Ruijter AU - Leonard Hofstra Y1 - 2022/09/01 UR - http://heart.bmj.com/content/108/17/1361.abstract N2 - Objectives To investigate the impact of a CT-first strategy on all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in patients presenting with chest pain in outpatient cardiology clinics.Methods Patients with a first presentation of suspected angina pectoris were identified and their data linked to the registrations of Statistics Netherlands for information on mortality. The linked database consisted of 33 068 patients. CT-first patients were defined as patients with a CT calcium score and coronary CT angiography, within 6 weeks after their initial visit. Propensity score matching (1:5) was used to match patients with and without a CT-first strategy. After matching, 12 545 patients were included of which 2308 CT-first patients and 10 237 patients that underwent usual care.Results Mean age was 57 years, 56.3% were women and median follow-up was 4.9 years. All-cause mortality was significantly lower in CT-first patients (n=43, 1.9%) compared with patients without CT (n=363, 3.5%) (HR: 0.51, 95% CI 0.37 to 0.70). Furthermore, CT-first patients were more likely to receive cardiovascular preventative and antianginal medication (aspirin: 44.9% vs 27.1%, statins: 48.7% vs 30.3%, beta-blockers: 37.8% vs 25.5%, in CT-first and without CT-first patients, respectively) and to undergo downstream diagnostics and interventions (coronary interventions: 8.5% vs 5.7%, coronary angiography: 16.2% vs 10.6% in CT-first and without CT-first patients, respectively).Conclusions In a real-world regular care database, a CT-first strategy in patients suspected of angina pectoris was associated with a lowering of all-cause mortality.Data are available on reasonable request. The CCN data is not publicly available due to ethical and data protection constraints, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The results of presented survival analyses are based on calculations by the authors using non-public microdata from Statistics Netherlands. Under certain conditions, these microdata are accessible for statistical and scientific research. For further information: microdata@cbs.nl. ER -