BACKGROUND Atherosclerotic plaque that shows echo signal attenuation (EA) without associated bright echoes is sometimes observed by intravascular ultrasound but its clinical significance remains unclear. We investigated the impact of EA on coronary perfusion and evaluated the pathological features of plaque with EA. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied 687 native coronary lesions in 687 consecutive...

OBJECTIVES To compare the efficacy and safety of percutaneous coronary intervention using second-generation drug-eluting stents with those of coronary artery bypass grafting among patients with multivessel disease and/or unprotected left main coronary artery disease in terms of mortality, myocardial infarction, repeat revascularization, and angina. BACKGROUND Although coronary artery disease ...

C oronary artery disease is a worldwide hazard today and stable angina is one of its commonest manifestations. The diagnosis of chronic stable angina is based on the presence of anginal symptoms, a positive exercise test for myocardial ischaemia, and confirmation of coronary artery atherosclerosis by coronary angiography. However, the optimum treatment of these patients has been a controversial...

Reperfusion after acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (AMI) remains the cornerstone of the initial therapy. Although reperfusion can be accomplished with either primary angioplasty or fibrinolytic therapy, clinical trial data reveal improved outcome with primary angioplasty. Furthermore, primary angioplasty with coronary stenting results in less repeat revascularization than balloo...

On the basis of clinical trials comparing coronary-artery bypass grafting (CABG) with medical therapy, current guideline recommend CABG as the treatment of choice for patients with asymptomatic ischemia, stable angina, or unstable angina/non-ST elevation myocardial infarction who have left main coronary artery disease. Percutaneous coronary intervention can be selectively performed in patients ...

BACKGROUND Some aspects of prognosis are not reflected by cumulative survival estimates. These aspects include information on the time already survived by the patient and the patient's survival compared with the general population. Conditional survival (ie, conditional on having survived a certain period of time already) and relative conditional survival (ie, compared with the general populatio...