The coronary vasculature has been traditionally divided into three functional groups: large conductance vessels visible on coronary angiography, which offer little resistance to blood flow; small resistance vessels ranging in size from about 250 to 10 μm in diameter; and veins. Although it has been taught that arterioles (precapillary vessels < 50 μm) account for most of the coronary resistance...

Heart rate and blood pressure responses during and after carotid sinus massage were examined in 66 patients just before coronary angiography. A significant relationship was found between heart rate and blood pressure responses and (1) angina pectoris class, (2) total coronary artery disease score and (3) presence of high-grade (> 90%) stenosis of any of the three major coronary arteries. Only p...

Case summary A 49-year-old man experienced syncope while he crossed a street, and he was transferred to our hospital. An electrocardiogram (ECG) showed a second-degree 2:1 atrioventricular block with narrow QRS complexes (Figure 1A). Curiously, the RR intervals were not constant while the PP intervals remained steady during the 2:1 AV block (Figure 1B). The echocardiogram revealed a normal left...

AIMS The aim of our study was to investigate the accuracy of 64-slice computed tomography (CT) for assessing haemodynamically significant stenoses of coronary arteries. METHODS AND RESULTS CT angiography was performed in 67 patients (50 male, 17 female; mean age 60.1+/-10.5 years) with suspected coronary artery disease and compared with invasive coronary angiography. All vessels > or =1.5 mm ...

OBJECTIVES This study was designed to evaluate whether the absence of coronary calcium could rule out >or=50% coronary stenosis or the need for revascularization. BACKGROUND The latest American Heart Association guidelines suggest that a calcium score (CS) of zero might exclude the need for coronary angiography among symptomatic patients. METHODS A substudy was made of the CORE64 (Coronary ...

A 45-year-old man had a history of myocardial infarction at one month prior to admission. Coronary angiography revealed a dilated fistula originating from the left anterior descending coronary artery to the pulmonary artery. Two orifices of the draining artery were closed through pulmonary arteriotomy. Ligation of the fistulous vessels was performed at three places to ensure complete closure of...

cardiovascular disease remains the principal cause of death in the modernized world.   several novel noninvasive imaging techniques have been recently developed to improve diagnosis of cardiac and coronary disease.   of these advances, multidetector computed tomographic (mdct) angiography has evolved most dramatically to transform computed tomography from a single-slice trans-axial modality to ...

background: investigators frequently encounter continuous outcomes with plenty of values clumped at zero called semi-continuous outcomes. the gensini score, one of the most widely used scoring systems for expressing coronary angiographic results, is of this type. the aim of this study was to apply two statistical approaches based on the categorization and original scale of the gensini score to ...

Diseases of coronary system and heart are the main reason of deaths in highly civilized population. Then the appropriate diagnostic methods and treating of early disorders are very important for a population health care. As the imaging techniques play a great role in good diagnosis they are intensively used and developed. Among the most commonly used methods is coronary angiography, which invol...