Rationale and design of the coronary artery calcium consortium: A multicenter cohort study

Through its large sample size, long length of follow-up, and ascertainment of cause of death the CAC Consortium is uniquely positioned to complement and expand the knowledge base from existing CAC cohorts. CAC, as a marker of biologic age, may be a predictor of multiple chronic diseases, requiring use the of competing risk modeling to understand the implications of clinical CAC scanning for the estimation of longevity and allocation of resources, particularly in understudied groups such as in the young and the elderly.