Carta Acesso aberto Revisado por pares

Absence of epicardial coronary stenosis in patients with systemic sclerosis with severe impairment of coronary flow reserve

2006; BMJ; Volume: 65; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1136/ard.2005.040154

ISSN

1468-2060

Autores

Alessandra Vacca,

Tópico(s)

Cardiovascular Disease and Adiposity

Resumo

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is known to be characterised by a diffuse microvascular pathological process leading to cutaneous and visceral changes and to related clinical manifestations. Both necropsy studies1,2 and in vivo investigations3–5 have shown that in a number of patients with SSc there is evidence of a coronary microvascular disease, while coronary artery disease does not exceed that seen in a control group. In particular, myocardial perfusion defects on thallium-201 scintigraphy usually occur in the absence of angiographic evidence of coronary stenosis.3 Recently, we used a new and non-invasive method of contrast enhanced, transthoracic, second harmonic echo Doppler in patients with SSc to evaluate the coronary flow reserve (CFR), a functional variable measuring the ability of the coronary microvasculature to adapt its lumen to a vasodilating stimulus.6 We detected a significant reduction of the CFR …

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