TUESDAY, Nov. 7 (HealthDay News) -- In patients who undergo coronary angiography, men are more likely than women to have left main coronary artery significant stenosis (LMSS) and at a younger age, according to a study in the November issue of the American Journal of Cardiology.
George D. Giannoglou, M.D., Ph.D., of the Aristotle University Medical School in Thessaloniki, Greece, and colleagues analyzed angiograms of 17,323 patients conducted between January 1984 and December 2003.
The researchers identified LMSS in 823 patients (4.8 percent). They found the LMSS was more common in men than in women (5.1 percent versus 3.4 percent) and that men with LMSS were significantly younger than their female counterparts (median age 63 versus 67). About half the LMSS patients had triple-vessel disease, which also was more common in men (odds ratio, 1.77).
"It seems that lesions throughout the rest of the coronary arterial tree accompany LMSS," the authors write. "This could indicate either an extension of a left main lesion to the proximal portions of the left anterior descending artery and left circumflex artery or severe diffuse coronary atherosclerosis. It seems that the former is more likely, taking into account the natural history of atherosclerosis, which involves focal lesions at initial stages that progress downstream over the long term."
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