OBJECTIVES This study sought to assess the value of quantitative coronary arteriography in predicting an ischemic response at exercise echocardiography and technetium-99m 2-methoxy isobutyl isonitrile (mibi) single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) in patients with single-vessel disease of the left anterior descending coronary artery. BACKGROUND The relation between severity of coro...

OBJECTIVES To compare magnetic resonance myocardial perfusion imaging (MRI) with anatomical assessment by multislice computed tomography (MSCT) coronary angiography and conventional coronary angiography. DESIGN AND PATIENTS In this prospective study, 53 patients (60% male, average age 57+/-9 years, 83% intermediate pre-test likelihood) underwent 1.5 T MRI, 64-slice MSCT and conventional coron...

Introduction Acute coronary stenosis has been reported as a rare but potentially serious complication of cavotricuspid isthmus (CTI) ablation. Various causes of the stenosis have been reported (thrombus, coronary spasm), but cause is often unknown. Most of the cases receive coronary intervention regardless of the cause. We present a case of “temporary edema” of the coronary artery wall provoked...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Prevalence of carotid artery stenosis in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) is unknown in Japanese population. METHODS The study populations consisted of 632 consecutive patients who underwent coronary angiography because of suspicion of CAD. All patients underwent carotid ultrasonography to screen carotid artery stenosis before coronary angiography. We defined...

A 40-year-old man was admitted to our hospital for chest pain after smoking. Coronary computed tomography angiography showed severe stenosis in the left anterior descending artery. The stenosis site had no plaque on stretched curved multiplanar reconstruction and short-axis images. Coronary angiography revealed improvement of the severe stenosis after the intracoronary administration of isosorb...

AIMS Coronary plaque characteristics are associated with ischaemia. Differences in plaque volumes and composition may explain the discordance between coronary stenosis severity and ischaemia. We evaluated the association between coronary stenosis severity, plaque characteristics, coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA)-derived fractional flow reserve (FFRCT), and lesion-specific ischaemi...

Congenital absence of left circumflex artery is a rare congenital anomaly of the coronary arteries. The prevalence of the anomaly in different studies ranges from 0.6% to 1.3%. Of these, 80% are benign and asymptomatic and 20% are clinically important. We report a 56-year-old man presented with acute resting chest pain who was diagnosed as having acute anterolateral infarction accompanied by el...

OBJECTIVE Fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23) is a circulating regulator of phosphate and vitamin D metabolism and is associated with coronary artery calcification, and has been implicated in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to determine whether circulating FGF23 concentration is independently associated with the severity and extent of coronary artery diseas...

Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) has high negative predictive power for detecting coronary artery disease. However CCTA is limited by moderate positive predictive power in the detection of myocardial ischemia. This is not unexpected because the diameter of a stenosis is a poor indicator of myocardial ischemia and discrepancy between the severity of stenosis and noninvasive tests ...

The purpose of this study was to determine the coronary microvascular sites of autoregulation. The epimyocardial coronary microcirculation was observed through an intravital microscope by stroboscopic epi-illumination in anesthetized open-chest dogs (n = 20). Aortic pressure and heart rate were held constant by an aortic snare and atrial pacing, respectively. Distal pressure of the left anterio...