Walk-through angina dates back more than 200 years. It was first described in a letter to the British physician, William Heberden. The term is used to describe patients with ischemic heart disease who have reduced symptoms after an episode of angina. It is related to ‘‘warm up’’ angina or, when playing golf, ‘‘first hole’’ angina. The mechanisms responsible for warm up angina are not yet clear,...

The intravenous infusion of adenosine provokes anginalike chest pain. To establish its origin, an intracoronary infusion of increasing adenosine concentrations was given in 22 patients with stable angina pectoris. During adenosine infusion, 20 patients had chest pain without electrocardiographic signs of ischemia. They all reported that the chest pain was similar to their usual anginal pain. In...

BACKGROUND Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) MRI reflects tissue oxygenation and may be useful for the detection of myocardial ischemia in patients with suspected coronary artery disease. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied 25 patients with stress-induced angina using a T2*-sensitive echo planar imaging sequence before and during adenosine in a single-slice approach. BOLD-MRI results were compar...

Clinical studies on cardioprotection by preinfarct angina are ambiguous, which may involve development of tolerance to repeated episodes of ischemia. Not all preconditioning stimuli use identical signaling pathways, and because patients likely experience varying numbers of episodes of preinfarct angina of different degrees and durations, it is important to know whether myocardium tolerant to a ...

OBJECTIVE To verify the behavior of coronary microvascular tone during spontaneous ischemia in patients with unstable angina (UA). BACKGROUND In UA, the pathogenetic role of vasoconstriction is classically confined at the stenotic coronary segment. However, microcirculatory vasoconstriction has been also suggested by previous experimental and clinical studies. METHODS The study included 10 ...

A 79-year-old man was diagnosed with sudden deafness. He had previously experienced a suspected episode of angina pectoris. At a local hospital, after 500 mg of hydrocortisone and 80 mg adenosine triphosphate (ATP) were administered, he became aware of chest discomfort. An electrocardiogram revealed serious ST-segment depressions. He was diagnosed with a non-ST elevated myocardial infarction (N...