Prevalence of noncardiac findings in computed tomography angiography before transcatheter aortic valve replacement

This study sought to determine the prevalence of significant and nonsignificant noncardiac findings in patients undergoing preprocedural dual-source CT (DSCT) before transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI).

Patients (n = 204; aged, 80.5 ± 5.1 years; 106 men) underwent preprocedural DSCT of the thoracoabdominal aorta and the pelvic arterial vessels. Noncardiac findings were recorded and categorized as nonsignificant (group A), incidental findings requiring follow-up examinations (group B), and significant findings with a demand for clinical treatment (group C).

In 60 of 204 DSCT examinations (29.4%) no noncardiac findings were observed. Of the remaining 144 examinations (70.6%), 260 had noncardiac findings; 35 of 204 patients (17.1%) had a total of 37 clinically significant noncardiac findings. Eight malignancies were detected; 5 of them were incidentally diagnosed on DSCT and changed patient management. A total of 223 nonsignificant findings were observed in 116 of 204 patients (56.9%; group A), the most frequent findings were pleural effusions or colorectal diverticulosis. The prevalence of incidental and significant findings on DSCT before TAVI increased with patient age (r(2) = 0.69; P = .01).

Significant noncardiac findings are common in patients referred to routine preprocedural DSCT for planning TAVI (17.1%).