[Degree of narrowing of regional and non-regional coronary arteries of hearts with myocardial infarction. A postmortem study (author's transl)].

137 hears with 185 infarctions with a diameter of at least 2.5 cm were investigated. Sometimes the infarcted areas were supplied by two arteries. Altogether there were 198 arteries supplying infarcted areas (= IA) and 213 arteries supplying non-infarcted areas (= NIA). The cross-sectional area of most severe stenosis of each coronary artery was determined and expressed in per cent of the area surrounded by the lamina elastica interna. Only two groups of infarctions were formed: recent infarcts (without and with organization) and old infarcts (completely scarred). Regarding all IA and NIA there were highly significant differences between the mean values. The rest of the lumen amounted in the IA 7.48% and in the NIA 38.20%. In hearts with recent infarcts, IA were significantly smaller (4.13%) than in hearts with old infarcts 8.75%). This difference is due to recanalizations in the group of old infarcts. Differences between the degree of stenosis of sole and repeated infarcts were missed and there was no correlation between the weight of the heart and the cross-sectional area of IAs. The IA of hearts with transmural infarction were constricted more strongly than those of hearts with subendocardial infarcts. 21 IA were larger than one NIA of the same heart. Most of these hearts included old infarcts and it is most probably that during the origin of the infarctions almost all of these IA were smaller than the NIA. The findings strongly support the coronarogenic origin of myocardial infarctions.