Lack of correlation between coronary risk factors and CAD severity

The coronary arterial lesions seen by angiography in 1666 consecutive male patients were converted to a score by the standardized scoring system advocated by Gensini. The resulting score, which allowed the disease to be expressed as a continuous variable, was effectively utilized to see the correlations between the severity of coronary arterial disease (CAD) and individual risk factors/risk markers. Significant correlations were seen between severity and age (P < 0.001), with a very low coefficient of correlation of 0.0873. On univariate analysis, no correlation was found between CAD severity and diabetes, smoking, positive family history of CAD, hypertension and other lipid fractions. On multiple regression analysis, significant correlations were found between severity and LDL Cholesterol, family history and total cholesterol after adjusting for other factors. The R2 for all these risk factors was only 14.1%. It is concluded that, although strong associations exist between risk factors and the occurrence of CAD, the small quantitative association detected between the presence of risk factors and the severity of disease is weak.