Plasma fibrinogen level may predict critical coronary artery stenosis in young adults with myocardial infarction

Background: This study aims to determine the role of hematological variables in determining critical coronary artery stenosis in young adults with myocardial infarction. Methods: This study includes 76 of 1,804 patients who applied to our hospital between January 2001 and December 2005. All were under 35 years old, diagnosed as acute myocardial infarction with clinical and laboratory findings, and had coronary angiography. Study patients were divided into two groups: those having critical coronary artery lesions (group I) and those having normal coronary arteries (group II). Then we compared these groups for age, sex, body mass index, risk factors, plasma protein C, protein S, antithrombine III and fibrinogen. Student t test, the c2 test, Fisher’s exact test and Mann Whitney U test were used. Results: There were no differences between the two groups in terms of hypertension (p = 0.70), smoking (p = 0.50), hyperlipidemia (p = 0.09), body mass index (p = 0.14), family history (p = 0.10), plasma protein C (p = 0.08), protein S (p = 0.35) or antithrombine III (p = 0.60). Plasma fibrinogen levels were significantly higher in group I than in group II (p = 0.001). Conclusions: Our study shows that high plasma fibrinogen levels may be used as a predictor of critical coronary artery lesions in young patients with acute myocardial infarction.