Vascular responses to ergometrine were compared in groups of patients subject to coronary artery spasm, or oesophageal spasm, or neither. We measured the degree of diffuse narrowing at different coronary artery sites (not in spasm), and the rise in blood pressure. The data provide no evidence for a generalised sensitivity to alpha-adrenergic stimulation underlying either of these two clinical e...

Myocardial infarction (MI) is an extremely common cause of chest pain. MI can be acute with ST elevation (STEMI) or non-STEMI (NSTEMI). Coronary artery spasm can be severe enough to cause occlusion of the coronary arteries particularly with an exaggerated response in regions of coronary atheroma and plaque ulceration. It is not uncommon for coronary spasm to be mistaken with acute thrombotic oc...

Multivessel coronary spasm resulting to cardiogenic shock and malignant ventricular arrhythmias though rare has been reported in the literature. The disease seems to be more prevalent in Asians. There have been isolated reports of coronary spasm in patients with reactive airway disease. We report the first case of spontaneous multivessel spasm in a male patient with bronchial asthma of Arab eth...

In contrast to effort-induced symptoms in obstructive coronary disease, spasm in normal coronary arteries is characterized by angina at rest. We describe a 44-year-old patient with minor coronary plaques and pure exercised-induced coronary spasm. The case questions the differential pathogenic considerations of variant of the variant as opposed to Prinzmetal's variant angina.

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to investigate the conformational change of arterial structure in the vasospastic lesion with optical coherence tomography. BACKGROUND Coronary artery spasm plays an important role in the pathogenesis of ischemic heart diseases. The conformational change of each arterial layer during vasospasm has not been studied in detail. METHODS We assessed 19 corona...

Coronary arteriography was performed before and after the intracoronary injection of nitroglycerin to determine the presence or absence of spasm in patients within the first 12 hours of acute myocardial infarction. Coronary arterial spasm was demonstrated in six of fifteen (40%) acute myocardial infarctions associated with coronary artery disease. In five of the six instances the interval from ...

OBJECTIVES We investigated the efficacy of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with coronary spastic angina (CSA) and severe organic stenosis. BACKGROUND Coronary spasm occurs at the site of organic stenosis in most patients with CSA and severe stenosis, whereas multivessel spasm occurs frequently in those with normal coronary arteries. The incidence of multivessel spasm and ...

Coronary spasm is a constriction of the epicardial coronary arteries that produces myocardial ischemia. It is considered the main mechanism of the dynamic coronary artery stenosis. The standard method for diagnosing coronary spasm is the ergonovine test during diagnostic coronary angiography. Another test currently used is stress echocardiography with intravenous ergonovine injection. We presen...

BACKGROUND Patients with angina and normal coronary arteries are often misdiagnosed with having non-cardiac pain. Although vasospasm is a well-known entity, spasm provocation is not routinely done in the majority of hospitals at present. MATERIALS AND METHODS One hundred and sixty two consecutive patients with thoracic pain and normal coronary arteries were retrospectively studied. The charac...