Coronary Turncoat

Abstract

Renegade vascular smooth muscle is either culprit or accomplice in causing a variety of human ills — essential hypertension, primary pulmonary hypertension and Raynaud's disease, to name a few. In recent years it has become apparent that the muscular coat of the medium-sized proximal coronary arteries, those usually involved with coronary atherosclerosis, may also join in this vascular rebellion, and cause coronary insufficiency through the mechanism of vasospasm.Much of the credit for identifying this disease belongs to Prinzmetal, who in 1959 described a remarkable series of patients in whom chest pain, anginal in nature, occurred at rest, but usually . . .