The complexity of coronary artery disease genetics arises from the diversity of clinical phenotypes and from the many biological pathways that contribute to atherosclerotic plaque biology, including lipid metabolism, inflammation, endothelial function, oxidative stress and thrombosis. In addition to environmental factors, interindividual variation in disease susceptibility or outcome may arise ...

Coronary spasm can occur in the presence or absence of coronary artery disease. We therefore determined the effect of preexisting coronary stenosis on the incidence of ventricular fibrillation during reperfusion after circumflex artery (CFX) occlusion. Twenty dogs underwent a 30-minute open-chest CFX occlusion. During reperfusion, CFX blood flow was restricted by a partial occluder. In dogs tha...

To examine the possible existence of collateral circulation during coronary artery spasm, we attempted to visualize the transient appearance of collateral vessels that could serve to salvage otherwise jeopardized ischemic areas. In three patients with vasospastic angina, total spastic obstruction of a major coronary artery was associated with transient collateral augmentation, which was supplie...

Background—Intracoronary brachytherapy is effective in preventing restenosis after coronary interventions. However, in vitro and animal studies have shown that irradiation produces immediate and sustained endothelial dysfunction. This study assesses the clinical relevance of impaired vasomotoric function induced by brachytherapy. Methods and Results—We analyzed the occurrence of postradiation c...

Pulsed field ablation (PFA) has been shown to avoid esophageal damage, PV stenosis and permanent phrenic nerve paralysis. But not studied in these trials was of the cavo-tricuspid isthmus (CTI), a uncommon adjunct target for during pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) procedures. Indeed, recent studies demonstrated that when PFA is performed adjacent coronary artery, there susceptibility vasospasm: s...