Imaging evidence of the relationship between atherosclerosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Abstract

Tobacco smoking is a risk factor for both pulmonary disease and atherosclerosis and a number of studies have provided both experimental and epidemiological evidence about the potential links between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and atherosclerosis that is not explained by tobacco smoking alone. While this evidence is very compelling, the direct mechanisms that potentially accelerate atherosclerosis development in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have not been established. At the same time, major advances in quantitative pulmonary and vascular noninvasive imaging tools have advanced the development and validation of surrogate or intermediate end points of these chronic disorders. This article provides a review of emerging and established imaging methods that have the potential to quantify pulmonary disease and atherosclerosis noninvasively and robustly, in the same patients over time; we summarize studies that endeavored to evaluate lung structure–function and atherosclerosis in...