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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2002;288:689.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Nearly 80% of patients recovering from a first myocardial infarction or other acute coronary syndrome (ACS) event have hidden plaque ruptures some distance away from the clot that caused the episode, according to a new study by French researchers. The investigators say that the finding supports the hypothesis that although a single lesion is clinically the culprit at the moment of an ACS event, the syndrome is associated with overall atherosclerotic plaque destabilization within the coronary arteries, a concept called pancoronaritis.

In the study, the investigators used intravascular ultrasound to examine the three major coronary arteries in 24 patients up to a month after the patients experienced an ACS event.

"We were very surprised to find that almost four out of five patients present one or more ruptured atherosclerotic plaques besides the culprit lesion," said Gilles Riouful, MD, PhD, of the Cardiovascular Hospital and Claude Bernard . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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