Aortic valve sclerosis: a marker of significant obstructive coronary artery disease in patients with chest pain?

Background: Previous reports suggested a relationship between coronary artery disease (CAD) and aortic valve sclerosis (AVS). However, whether AVS can be used as a marker of obstructive CAD (obCAD) in patients with chest pain is unknown. We hypothesized that AVS is a predictive marker for obCAD in patients hospitalized for chest pain.

Carotid atherosclerotic plaque instability in patients with acute myocardial infarction.

Unlabelled: The instability of atherosclerotic plaque is partly determined by local factors, but systemic factors such as infection, inflammation, autoimmunity or genes might also be important. We aimed to analyze whether patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) might have a higher proportion of unstable plaques in the carotid arteries compared with patients who had had no acute coronary events.

Methods: Sixty-nine consecutive patients with AMI (Group 1) and 95 patients without acute coronary events (Group 2) had carotid artery duplex ultrasounds.