No abstract

One thousand women younger than age 50 years suspected of having coronary disease were followed for at least 5 years (average 8.4 years) to determine their course after coronary arteriography. Three patients were lost to follow-up; all had normal arteriograms. The survival rate was 96.9% at 5 years for 761 patients who had less than 50% narrowing of any artery. One patient who had coronary ectasia died within 5 years, and one woman who had minimal lesions suffered sudden death. Seven of 727 women who had normal arteries or less than 30% narrowing of any artery had coronary events (death, myocardial infarction, bypass operation for progressive disease), and six of 34 women who had 30 to almost 50% obstruction of at least one artery had coronary events. Calculations of survival for 236 women who had severe coronary lesions were affected by withdrawal for operation. Five-year survival was 74%.

SUMMARYThe extent of arterial involvement seemed to be related to the duration of symptoms in patients who had angina pectoris or myocardial infarctions.Clinical diagnoses correlated well with the angiographic findings, particularly in those men considered to be normal and those with typical angina pectoris. Addition of atypical features or prolonged pain decreased the degree of correlation.Only 20% of those with cholesterol levels less than 200 mg/100 ml had significant lesions, whereas 81% with levels more than 275 mg/ 100 ml had such findings.Additional Indexing Words: Arteriosclerotic heart disease Angina pectoris P REVIOUS reports'-3 have presented analyses of various characteristics of a group of 1,000 patients studied by selective cinecoronary arteriography. Those patients were not selected according to age or sex. This study presents a series of young men similarly examined. The extent and location of coronary artery narrowing, correlations of clinical symptoms with arterial lesions, influence of serum cholesterol levels, and the relationship of duration of symptoms to the severity of arterial involvement were investigated.