Background. Coronary artery ectasia (CAE) occurs in 0.3 to 5.3% of patients undergoing coronary angiography. TIMI frame count (TFC) is an index of coronary flow that correlates with flow velocity. In ectasia patients, there is delayed coronary flow with increased TFC. Methods. We evaluated angiograms of 789 patients for presence of CAE, coronary artery disease (CAD), and Markis type of CAE. We ...

BACKGROUND In patients admitted to the emergency department with complaints of chest pain and unstable angina pectoris, ST-elevation MI scoring is done according to risk factors used to calculate risks of urgent revascularization, MI, and death within 14 days. For this calculation, the most widely used scoring system is TIMI risk score. MATERIAL AND METHODS In this prospective, cross-sectiona...

OBJECTIVE Slow coronary flow (SCF) phenomenon is described as the delayed opacification of the distal vasculature and angiographically normal coronary arteries. Considerable studies have suggested that the interval from the peak to the end of the electrocardiographic T wave (Tpe) may correspond to the transmural dispersion of repolarization and that increased Tpe interval and Tpe/QT ratio are a...

BACKGROUND The coronary slow flow (CSF) phenomenon is a delayed antegrade progression of contrast agent to the distal branch of a coronary artery in the absence of obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD). A narrow fragmented QRS (fQRS) has been reported as a significant predictor of sudden cardiac death in patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. The present study aimed to investigate...

OBJECTIVES To investigate current evidence linking ischemic postconditioning (IPC) to cardioprotection in patients receiving primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). METHODS We performed searches of PubMed, Embase, MEDLINE and Cochrane databases from January 1998 to May 2011 for identifying relevant studies comparing IPC with usual care in patients undergoing primary PCI. A meta-anal...

AIMS Doppler guidewire studies demonstrated that the no-reflow phenomenon in acute myocardial infarction is associated with characteristic coronary blood flow pattern. We investigated the potential of coronary flow measurement with transthoracic Doppler technique to detect the no-flow in the patients with reperfused infarction, and compared it to that of other modalities. METHODS AND RESULTS ...

BACKGROUND The angiographic no-reflow phenomenon is an adverse prognostic factor in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of an occlusive balloon type distal protection device (PercuSurge GuardWire: GW) during primary stenting in patients with anterior AMI. METHODS AND RESULTS The GW group included 42 patients treated by prim...

INTRODUCTION Slow coronary flow (SCF) is described as the slow passage of contrast to distal coronaries despite anatomically normal coronary arteries. It has been shown that increased serum prolidase activity (SPA) correlates with collagen turnover. Increased collagen turnover might be associated with the development of atherosclerotic plaques. AIM To investigate the relationship between seru...