Expected course of patients with coronary artery disease.

It is apparent that coronary artery disease is extremely common. As many as 15 percent of young men have significant disease of at least one major coronary artery. Each year approximately 1 percent of middle aged men will develop symptoms of coronary disease. The standard risk factors identify people with a greater risk of developing symptoms. The overall mortality rate of symptomatic patients is about 4 to 5 percent per year in patients with all types of angina pectoris and in survivors of acute myocardial infarction. In symptomatic patients it is possible to identify groups with a risk a dying as low as 1 percent per year and other groups with a risk of dying of 25 to 50 percent per year by simple, noninvasive techniques. However the most powerful predictors of survival in asymptomatic or symptomatic patients are the severity of the coronary artery disease and damage to the left ventricle.