Coronary heart disease has been one of the main threats to human health. Coronary angiography is taken as the gold standard; for the assessment of coronary artery disease. However, sometimes, the images are difficult to visually interpret because of the crossing and overlapping of vessels in the angiogram. Vessel extraction from X-ray angiograms has been a challenging problem for several years....

OBJECTIVE Percutaneous coronary intervention with drug-eluting stents is challenging coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) as the gold standard for treatment of three-vessel and left main coronary disease. We evaluated the current practice pattern in hospitals throughout Europe and USA. METHODS To qualify for participation in the SYNTAX (Synergy between PCI with TAXUS drug-eluting stent and ...

CORONARY artery anomalies were formerly regarded as having slight clinical significance. This attitude reflected the little that could be accomplished in the way of diagnosis and treatment. Today, however, recognition seems imperative for four reasons. First, corrective surgery is available in certain instances. Secondly, there are cases in which correction is contraindicated. Thirdly, the pres...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to examine the ability of exercise single-photon emission computed tomographic (SPECT) thallium imaging to identify high risk women with left main or three-vessel coronary artery disease using a stepwise discriminant analysis. BACKGROUND Previous studies have used statistical methods to identify high risk men with coronary artery disease. Only limited data...

BACKGROUND Direct noninvasive visualization of the coronary vessel wall may enhance risk stratification by quantifying subclinical coronary atherosclerotic plaque burden. We sought to evaluate high-resolution black-blood 3D cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging for in vivo visualization of the proximal coronary artery vessel wall. METHODS AND RESULTS Twelve adult subjects, including...

CT scanning of the heart is becoming increasingly common in Norway. CT coronary angiography is a non-invasive method used to diagnose and chart arteriosclerotic disease. The method also lends itself to the detection of anatomical variants such as coronary anomalies. According to the literature, coronary artery anomalies occur in 0.2 – 1.2 % of the population (1). As a rule the anomalies have no...

PURPOSE Many patients admitted for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) have chronic renal insufficiency and erectile dysfunction (ED). This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between ED and the glomerular filtration rate (GFR) in patients with coronary artery disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS We studied 183 patients undergoing coronary angiography owing to AMI. The GFR was calculated and the...

A 69-year-old patient with unstable angina presented to cardiac catheterization with a tight lesion in the mid right coronary artery (Figure 1A) and moderate lesions in the left main and left anterior descending coronary arteries. During coronary angioplasty, a stent was electively implanted in the right coronary artery, with good initial results. However, during subsequent aggressive, high-pre...