© 2003 by BMJ Publishing Group & British Cardiac Society
EDITORIAL
Invasive assessment of myocardial bridges
London Chest Hospital, London, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr C J Knight, London Chest Hospital, Bonner Road, London E2 9JX, UK;
knightlch@aol.com
Myocardial bridges may cause clinically relevant problems only in certain patients. Therefore, methods of assessment which can identify those bridges that may cause ischaemia are required in order to guide treatment
Keywords: myocardial bridge; angiography; intravascular ultrasound; intracoronary Doppler; coronary arteries
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
It has been recognised for over 200 years that epicardial coronary arteries may be crossed by muscular bands for limited segments of their courses.1 The term myocardial bridge was first employed in 1961 in a case report describing angiographic systolic narrowing.2 Opinion remains divided as to whether myocardial bridges have pathological consequences or are merely epiphenomena. The clinical consequences of myocardial bridges are difficult to evaluate and invoking the presence of a myocardial bridge as a cause of myocardial ischaemia remains not wholly respectable in the view of many cardiologists. On the one hand a wide range of clinical problems, including acute coronary syndromes and arrhythmias, have been reported in patients whose sole apparent cardiac abnormality is the presence of a myocardial bridge.2,3 Conversely, myocardial bridges may be identified in asymptomatic individuals, there seems little correlation between the severity of systolic narrowing and clinical outcome, and doubts remain about the
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
