[The "natural" history of ischemic cardiopathy, Incidence of coronary events in the follow-up of 114 ambulatory patients].

In the last decade advances in cardiovascular research improved remarkably our understanding of coronary heart disease. However many important problems are so far unresolved. In the present study we focused on the "natural" history of ischemic heart disease in a group of 114 patients. One hundred-seven patients had recent myocardial infarction, and seven suffered from angina. They were observed for a mean period of five years (one to 168 months). Forty-nine patients (42.9%) had no coronary events; sixty-five had angina, myocardial infarction or both. The myocardial infarction was however rare (five cases). The most frequent presentation of angina was stable and effort angina, which sometimes subsided after a period of presence. The classification of angina was often very difficult in cases of effort angina with very low threshold. No relevant differences were found between patients with and without coronary events according to age, sex, duration of follow-up, location of previous myocardial infarction. A significant difference was found in the prevalence of risk factors only for hypertension, which was more frequent in patients with coronary events. Smokers were more frequent in group without coronary events. In our opinion, the most interesting conclusion is that, almost half of these patients remained completely asymptomatic for a very long period.