RESEARCH ARTICLE
Myocardial Ischemia in Wegener’s Granulomatosis: Coronary Atherosclerosis Versus Vasculitis
Giuseppe Cocco1, *, Armen Yuri Gasparyan2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 57
Last Page: 62
Publisher ID: TOCMJ-4-57
DOI: 10.2174/1874192401004010057
Article History:
Received Date: 5/11/2009Revision Received Date: 17/11/2009
Acceptance Date: 30/11/2009
Electronic publication date: 23/2/2010
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Wegener’s granulomatosis (WG) is one of the most common small- and medium-sized necrotizing vasculitides that mainly affects the upper and lower respiratory tract and the kidneys. Cardiac manifestations in WG are relatively rare, and their role and place among different causes of mortality remain largely unknown. Substantially increased number of reports describing involvement of all structures of the heart, which underlie conduction disturbances, valvular disease, ischemic heart disease and other potentially serious conditions, underscores importance of comprehensive cardiovascular investigations and monitoring of patients with WG. The majority of previous reports and our current observation distinguish coronary vasculitis and thrombosis as a cause of myocardial ischemia and cardiovascular co-morbidities in WG. It seems plausible that inflammatory processes in this disease, like in some other systemic vasculitidies, do not predispose to accelerated atherogenesis. However, characteristic small- and medium-sized vasculitis still can manifest as myocardial ischemia and infarction. We overview diverse cardiac manifestations and present our own rare case of angina in the oligosymptomatic debut of WG. Importantly, in this case, coronarography failed to reveal atherosclerotic disease or thrombotic occlusion. However, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with adenosine test revealed subendocardial ischemia. As a result of immunosuppressive therapy with a steroid and cyclophosphamide, myocardial ischemia disappeared.
