[Myocardial infarction before the age of 35. Clinical and coronarographic aspects]

Myocardial infarction under the age of 35 is no longer a rarity. A series of 22 patients exhibited all the usual epidemiological, clinical and angiographic features of the disease: risk factors, predominantly excessive smoking associated with dyslipoproteinaemia in 50% of the cases; onset during exercise in one quarter of the cases, more frequently than in elderly people; and absence of significant lesions at angiography in one third of the cases. Angiography of the coronary arteries, performed in the early stages of infarction in 5 patients, demonstrated the presence of several factors in the pathogenesis of arterial occlusion in young people, i.e. thrombosis in almost every case, arterial spasm in 10% of the patients and atheromatous plaques with little or no stenosis in one half.