The spectrum of diseases of small coronary arteries and their physiologic consequences.

There is a wide spectrum of abnormalities in the structure of small coronary arteries, with regard both to the portion of the arterial wall involved and to the histologic nature of the disease. A fuller understanding of this spectrum permits more useful interpretation of the pathophysiologic basis for the functional consequences of small coronary artery disease. In this review based on personal observations during examination of more than 1,000 human hearts postmortem there is initially a description of the wide variety of structural abnormalities, then a discussion of the functional consequences of these abnormalities and finally a section of general comments to weave together the structural and functional discussion in the context of clinical evaluation of patients who have small coronary artery disease. Future studies should apply fractal analysis and quantitative topology, methods that lend themselves particularly well to an investigation of the progressively smaller branching of the human coronary tree.