Centrifugal extension of coronary intimal necrotic areas

The use of serial cross-sections, camera lucida drawings and photographic reconstruction of longitudinally cut samples, revealed that about half of intimal necrotic areas present in the coronary arteries of subjects aged 41-50 years exhibited a longitudinal diameter greater than 1.0 cm, occurring as very long lesions. In the 16 intimal necrotic areas included in a tridimensional study the longitudinal diameter was 7.8 times greater than the transverse one and 11.3 times greater than the luminal-medial diameter. The important centrifugal extension of coronary intimal necrotic areas during the fifth decade of life, particularly in male subjects, could not be detected grossly; it required a meticulous light microscopic examination of stained tissue section. This centrifugal extension was sometimes associated with the presence of a "border zone" of intermediate injury developed at the point where the intimal necrotic area irradiated in the direction of blood flow. This distal side of the lesion appeared as a highly irregular boundary with numerous peninsulas of interdigitating necrotic and apparently normal connective tissue. The present results, associated with those of our previous reports, support the view that human atherosclerosis has many attributes of a necrotizing arteriopathy.