Clinical Value of the Diagonal Earlobe Crease in Patients with Chest Pain for Diagnosing Coronary Heart Disease.

PURPOSE

To investigate the clinical application value of diagonal earlobe crease (DELC) in patients with chest pain for the diagnosis of coronary heart disease (CHD) and to construct a risk model by multivariate logistic regression.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Our trial enrolled prospectively and consecutively 706 chest pain patients with suspected CHD between January 2021 to June 2023 from Chengde Central Hospital. According to coronary angiography results, they were categorized into the CHD (n=457) and non-CHD groups (n=249).

RESULTS

The trial demonstrated a significant positive relationship between DELC and CHD. Independent risk factors were sex, age, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, LP (a), Cys C, and DELC, whilst HDL-C was a protective factor, for CHD. Patients with-DELC were older than those in the without-DELC arm (<0.001) and had a higher proportion of males than females (61.6% vs 50.0%, =0.026). After multifactorial correction, independent risk factors for CHD included DELC (OR=1.660, 95% CI:1.153 to 2.388, =0.006), age (OR=1.024, 95% CI:1.002 to 1.045, =0.030), gender (OR=1.702, 95% CI:1.141 to 2.539, =0.009), hypertension (OR=1.744, 95% CI:1.226 to 2.482, =0.002), diabetes mellitus (OR=2.113, 95% CI:1.404 to 3.179, <0.001), LP(a) (OR=1.010, 95% CI:1.003 to 1.017, =0.005), Cys C (OR=3.549, 95% CI:1.605 to 7.846, =0.002). The Hosmer and Lemeshow (H-L) test (=0.818) suggests a high goodness of fit, and the area under the ROC curve was calculated to be 0.721 (95% CI:0.682 to 0.760, <0.001), which demonstrates that the model has a superior diagnostic value for CHD.

CONCLUSION

DELC is an independent risk factor for CHD after adjusting for sex, age, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, smoking index, LP (a), Cys C, and HDL-C. Our model can be used clinically for assessing the risk of CHD.