Clinical course and symptomatology of angina pectoris in a population study

The clinical course of angina pectoris was studied in a follow-up study of 427 patients with angina from a general population sample. The subjects were men aged 56-65 years at the time of follow-up. After a mean follow-up time of 5.8 years, 55% were still suffering from angina pectoris, 15% had died and a further 19% were either free from chest pain or had chest pain considered to be of different origin. In the group with definite angina pectoris at follow-up (n = 236), 29% had sustained a myocardial infarction, 23% had symptoms of intermittent claudication, 36% were treated for hypertension and 15% had diabetes. Many of the angina patients suffered from other chest conditions in addition to anginal symptoms. Most of the patients (56%) had infrequent attacks (a few times per month or less often) and were not severely incapacitated by their symptoms. Only one fifth worked full time compared with more than half of those in the same age groups in the general population. Only 16 of those interviewed had undergone bypass surgery and a further 16 had disabling angina but, for various reasons, they had not been operated on. The implications are that most angina patients do well on pharmacological treatment alone even though they are limited socially as well as physically. Precipitating factors other than physical activity were also investigated and associations were found between susceptibility to cold, early morning angina, angina at rest and attacks of long duration, possibly indicating a mechanism of vasospasm superimposed on a fixed stenosis.