Silent Obstruction of the Coronary Stenosis between Diagnostic Angiography and Later Percutaneous Transluminal Coronary Angioplasty without Myocardial Infarction

YAMBE, T., NITTA, S., CHIBA, S., SAIJOH, Y., NAGANUMA, S., AKIHO, H., KAKINUMA, Y., IZUTSU, K., KIKUCHI, Y., NAGANUMA, T., SUGAWARA, S., TANAKA, M., MEGURO, T., SASAKI, H., MITSUOKA, M., TERASAWA, Y., NITTA, K., KATAHIRA, Y., OHTOMO, T., ENDOH, N., TAKEDA, H., SONOBE, T., TAKAHASHI, K., MIURA, M., SATO, N. and MOHRI, H. Silent Obstruction of the Coronary Stenosis between Diagnostic Angiography and Later Percutaneous Transluminal Coronary Angioplasty without Myocardial Infarction. Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 1991, 163 (3), 167-174 - Among 204 patients with severe coronary artery senosis amenable to percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), 5 (2.5%) developed new silent total coronary occlusion of the vessel to be dilated without any chest symptom during the period between diagnostic coronary angiography and repeat coronary angiography at the time of the operation. We evaluated the clinical and angiographical characteristics of the patients with silent obstruction of the coronary artery in a short time, compared with the patients with unstable angina pectoris, who is considered to be suffering from acute myocardial infarction with severe chest symptom. None of the clinical variables studied showed a significant difference between the two groups. Among the angiographic variables, the degree of collateral was higher and impaired coronary perfusion distal to the lesion was more frequently found in unstable angina group. These results suggest that unstable angina is in a later stage of the ischemic heart disease compared with the time of the diagnostic angiography in patients with silent obstruction. Silent obstruction of high degree coronary stenosis is presumably due to the development of collateral circulation.