[Sudden death outside the hospital from coronary heart disease: the state of the intercoronary artery collaterals].

By means of postmortem selective coronary angiography coronary collaterals of 55 sudden out-of-hospital coronary death victims were investigated. The collaterals were found in most (58,5%) sudden coronary death cases. There was no correlation between the presence of coronary collaterals, on the one hand, and ischaemic heart disease symptoms during the life and focal myocardial lesions in deceased persons, on the other. The investigation showed the maximal formation of collaterals in cases with asymmetrical obstructive lesions of the right and left coronary arteries. This is in agreement with a hypothesis claiming the coronary collateral formation to be dependent on the pressure gradient between individual coronary arteries.