[The clinical manifestations and angiographic characteristics of coronary artery ectasia]

To retrospectively analyze the clinical manifestations of coronary artery ectasia and its angiographic characteristics.

Twenty-five patients who underwent coronary angiography were diagnosed as coronary artery ectasia from January 2005 to December 2007. 25 cases of coronary artery atherosclerosis were also included and 25 cases with normal coronary arteriography in the same period were taken as control.

Most of the patients were male (72%). Only three patients had diabetes and thirteen patients had hypertension. All the patients with coronary artery ectasia were admitted for chest pain. Nine of them showed abnormal ST changes and four elevated ST in ECG. Coronary artery ectasia was associated with slow coronary flow in 9 patients and coronary stenosis in 4 patients. The frequency of arterial involvement, in descending order, was right coronary artery in 76%, left anterior descending artery in 60%, left circumflex artery in 48% and left main artery in 8%. Ectasia affected only one major vessel was found in 44%, and all three vessels in 36%. As compared with the patients with coronary artery atherosclerosis and patients with normal coronary artery, patients with CAE had a lower prevalence of diabetes (12%), and there were no other significant statistics in clinical demography and other risk factors such as hypertension and dyslipidemia.

Coronary artery ectasia was prevalent in males and diabetes was less frequent. The RCA was the most commonly affected vessel and most of the patients had single vessel involvement.