Prevalence of Carotid Artery Calcification in Hemodialysis Patients: A Case–Control Study

The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of carotid artery calcification (CAC) in panoramic dental radiographs of chronic hemodialysis patients and to compare the values obtained with the healthy group. Panoramic radiographs of 76 patients (38 with hemodialysis and 38 with control) (age range 15–79 years; mean age 52.89 years) were examined. CAC was defined as the presence of heterogeneous nodular opacities in the soft tissue in C3–C4 intervertebral area on panoramic radiographs. Using Chi-squared tests, calcification prevalence rates were statistically compared. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (version 20.0; SPSS, Inc., an IBM Company, Chicago, IL, USA) was used. A probability p