Background Patients with unstable angina despite intensive medical therapy, ie, refractory angina, are at high risk for developing thrombotic complications: myocardial infarction or coronary occlusion during percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA). Chimeric 7E3 (c7E3) Fab is an antibody fragment that blocks the platelet glycoprotein (GP) Ib/IIIa receptor and potently inhibits plat...

It is widely perceived that unstable angina is a critical phase of coronary heart disease. The risk of acute myocardial infarction or death in these patients is high: up to 5% during hospitalization, 20% within 30 days, and 25% in 6 months. Medical and invasive treatment options for these patients have been rather discouraging, with two reasons responsible for this unsatisfactory state: first, ...

BACKGROUND The treatment of unstable angina targets the specific pathophysiological thrombotic process at the site of the active culprit lesion. In unstable angina due to a restenotic lesion, smooth muscle cell proliferation and increased vasoreactivity may play a more important role than thrombus formation. Therefore, the relative benefits of nitroglycerin and heparin might differ in unstable ...

OBJECTIVE To discriminate between chronic inflammation and acute activation of the plaque immune response in culprit lesions of patients with acute coronary syndromes. DESIGN Retrospective study. SETTING Tertiary referral centre. SUBJECTS 71 patients having coronary atherectomy were classified according to their ischaemic syndrome: stable angina (n = 23); stabilised unstable angina (n = 1...

BACKGROUND The blood coagulation system is activated in the acute phase of unstable angina and acute myocardial infarction. However, it remains unclear whether augmented function of the hemostatic mechanism serves only as a marker of the acute thrombotic episode or whether a hypercoagulable state persists for a prolonged period after clinical stabilization. METHODS AND RESULTS We prospectivel...

BACKGROUND Systemic markers of inflammation have been found in unstable angina. Disruption of culprit coronary stenoses may cause a greater inflammatory response in patients with unstable than those with stable angina. We assessed the time course of C-reactive protein (CRP), serum amyloid A protein (SAA), and interleukin-6 (IL-6) after single-vessel PTCA in 30 patients with stable and 56 patien...

Unstable angina is used interchangeably with a variety of other terms to refer to a clinical situation intermediate in severity between chronic effort angina and myocardial infarction. In most reports dealing with this syndrome, the patients were selected according to a number of criteria which varied from one study to another. Some authors recognized subgroups of patients with variable severit...

Introduction: Coronary artery disease (CAD) is among the most common, serious, chronic and life- threatening illnesses in the world. CAD represents a spectrum of conditions, with acute myocardial infarction at one end of it and silent ischemia at the other. There is growing evidence on importance of prognosis of C- reactive protein (CPR) in unstable angina and this protein is a maker of an adve...