Annual coronary arteriograms have been obtained from all heart transplant recipients at Stanford University Medical Center since 1969. Angiographic lesions in 81 transplant patients exhibiting coronary vascular disease were classified into three categories: type A, discrete or tubular stenoses; type B, diffuse concentric narrowing; and type C, narrowed irregular vessels with occluded branches. The 81 arteriograms showing transplant coronary vascular disease were contrasted with 32 from nontransplant patients with coronary artery disease analyzed in a similar fashion.
The nontransplant angiograms showed 178 lesions, all of type A (discrete or tubular) morphology, 75% of which were located in primary epicardial coronary vessels and 25% in secondary branch vessels. In the patients with transplant coronary vascular disease, 349 (76%) of 461 lesions were type A: 57% in primary vessels, 42% in secondary branches and 1.4% in tertiary branches. Of the 112 type B and C lesions (diffuse narrowing, tapering and obliteration), 25% were in primary vessels, 44% in secondary vessels and 31% in tertiary branches (p < 0.05 for patients with transplant coronary vascular disease versus patients with nontransplant coronary artery disease). Total vessel occlusion was found in proximal or middle vessel segments in 96% and distally in 4% of patients with “ordinary” coronary artery disease versus 49% distally in patients with transplant coronary disease (p < 0.002). In the presence of total vessel occlusion, collateral vessels were poor or absent in 92% of transplant versus 7% of nontransplant patients with coronary disease (p < 0.002).
Therefore, coronary artery disease in transplant patients represents a mixture of typical atheromatous lesions and unique transplant-related progressive distal obliterative disease that occurs without collateral vessel development.
