[Anatomy of coronary arteries]

To study the coronary arteries we collected 200 black african hearts which coronaries have been injected with Rhodopast then corroded. Most of the arteries (74.10%) originate from two separate sinuses one on the left and the other one on the right. The right coronary artery runs in two different modes. In one mode it is short and ends in different branches. In the other mode it is long and runs up to the crux. The left coronary artery arrives on the left border of the heart and gives the circumflex and the left border artery. The bifurcation mode of division was 32.25% for the right coronary artery and 69.35% for the left coronary artery which had à trifurcation in 36.66%. The superior atrial artery was not seen in 3 cases and the infundibular arteries derived from the aorta in 3 cases. We have encountered intercoronary anastomoses in 82.6% of cases. These results are similar to these observed in the literature. The only difference is on the rich intercoronary anastomosis which seems to be an african particularity even though we cannot establish if they are functional or not.