Aneurysms of the left main coronary artery are exceedingly rare clinical entities, encountered incidentally in approximately 0.1% of patients who undergo routine angiography. The most common cause of coronary artery aneurysms is atherosclerosis. Angiography is the gold standard for diagnosis and treatment. Depending on the severity of the coexisting coronary stenosis, patients with left main co...

A retrospective study was carried out in 114 unoperated and 197 operated patients having left main coronary artery (LMCA) stenosis 2 50%. Including the operative mortality of 9.1%, survival at seven years was significantly greater following pure aortocoronary bypass graft surgery, 77.5% as compared to 48.5% for the unoperated patients (P < 0.01). The surgical mortality was significantly less du...

Between 1 January, 1989, and 28 April, 1990, a total of 888 selective coronary arteriographies were performed at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague. Of that number, 58 findings were assessed as at least 50% stenosis of the left main coronary artery (LCA). Having applied exclusion criteria, 50 patients (i.e., 5.63% of all those examined) were entered into a retrospect...

A relation between the proximal or distal localisation ofatherosclerotic lesions and 3 anatomical variables (i) the length of the left main coronary artery, (ii) its angle of bifurcation into anterior descending and circumflex arteries, and (iii) the dominant coronary artery, was sought at coronary angiography. Studies were made on 149 angiograms of which 95 had critical stenoses (>50% of vesse...

Percutaneous coronary intervention for unprotected left main coronary artery disease is potentially an important intervention in surgically unstable patients. A detailed review of medical record and visual analysis of coronary angiography and PCI procedure was undertaken. The study was conducted at the Aga Khan University Hospital, from January 2003 to December 2007. Patients included in the st...

Left main coronary artery disease (i.e., greater than or equal to 50% stenosis) was found in 1,477 of 20,137 patients in the Coronary Artery Surgery Study (CAS) registry. Of these patients, 53 (3.6%) were asymptomatic. Asymptomatic and symptomatic patients were similar in regard to 1) severity of left main coronary artery stenosis (67% vs. 70%), 2) extent of proximal coronary artery disease (no...

Significant unprotected left main coronary artery (ULMCA) disease occurs in 5-7% of patients undergoing coronary angiography [1,2] and patients with ULMCA disease treated medically have a three years mortality rate of 50% [3,4]. Advances in percutaneous intervention techniques and stent technology have allowed evolution of the role of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for left main disea...

Coronary artery bypass surgery is considered as the gold standard treatment of unprotected left main coronary artery (ULMCA) disease. Over the last 20 years, improvement in stent technology and operators experience explained the increased number of reports on the results of percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) for the treatment of left main (LM) coronary artery lesion. The recent data com...

Obstructive lesions of the main left coronary artery (LCA) were demonstrated angiographically in 73 patients, comprising 4.3% of the total population referred to us for diagnostic evaluation of chest pain. Although there were no specific historical or clinical features which could absolutely distinguish this subgroup from the larger population of coronary artery disease patients, 81% (34/42) of...