High cardiovascular event rates in patients with asymptomatic carotid stenosis: the REACH registry*

Background and purpose: Data on current cardiovascular event rates in patients with asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis (ACAS) are sparse. We compared the 1-year outcomes of patients with ACAS >= 70% versus patients without ACAS in an international, prospective cohort of outpatients with or at risk of atherothrombosis. Methods: The Reduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health Registry enrolled patients with either >= 3 atherothrombotic risk factors or established atherothrombotic disease. We investigated the 1-year follow-up data of patients for whom physicians reported presence/absence of ACAS at the time of inclusion. Results: Compared with patients without ACAS (n = 30 329), patients with ACAS (n = 3164) had higher age- and sex-adjusted 1-year rates of transient ischaemic attack (3.51% vs. 1.61%, P < 0.0001), non-fatal stroke (2.65% vs. 1.75%, P = 0.0009), fatal stroke (0.49% vs. 0.26%, P = 0.04), cardiovascular death (2.29% vs. 1.52%, P = 0.002), the composite end-point cardiovascular death/myocardial infarction/stroke (6.03% vs. 4.29%, P < 0.0001) and bleeding events (1.41% vs. 0.81%, P = 0.002). In patients with ACAS, Cox regression analyses identified history of cerebrovascular ischaemic events as most important predictor of future stroke (HR 3.21, 95% CI 1.82-5.65, P < 0.0001). Conclusion: Asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis was associated with high 1-year rates of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular ischaemic events. Stroke was powerfully predicted by prior cerebrovascular ischaemic events.