Topography of atherosclerotic coronary artery disease.

This article reviews several issues relevant to current interest in coronary angioplasty, acute reperfusion, and the use of new interventional devices (stents, probes, atherectomy devices, etc.): diffuse versus focal nature of plaque, the number of vessels severely diseased, quantitation of luminal stenosis and length of stenosis, and the distribution of plaque in the four major coronary arteries in various clinical ischemic subsets.