Cardiovascular rehabilitation (CR) is an effective and safe treatment for stable coronary artery disease (CAD) patients, with established benefits to improving quality of life and reducing cardiovascular mortality and hospital admission. The effects of CR on reducing myocardial ischemia have been documented,– justifying the CR Class IA recommendation. However, CR is still neglected and underused worldwide. Refractory angina (RA) is a disabling condition affecting CAD patients under optimized medical therapy with a residual ischemic burden for more than three months […]

Richard Lower of Amsterdam first called attention to channels connecting the right and left coronary arteries in 1669. The Swiss anatomist Albrecht von Haller demonstrated these anastomoses by dissecting the coronary arteries. So, for centuries now, the presence of a well-developed collateral network providing blood supply to an underperfused myocardium has gained significant interest in physiology and physiopathology, and later, in therapeutics. Many questions kept scientists working restlessly to unravel the key players favoring the development of collateral vessels in […]

Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is still a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, and its risk factors have already been identified. Dyslipidemia, high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, diabetes and adiposity are frequently present, mostly in combination, in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). , Identifying patients at risk for developing CAD and presenting acute coronary syndromes is of great value, and many scores were created with this aim, such as the Framingham risk score, the ASSIGN score and the QRISKR2 […]

Despite our great advances in medical technology, Cardiovascular Disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is one of the hallmarks. It is believed that the first correlation between coronary flow and angina pectoris was made by William Heberden in 1768, but its anatomical remarks were only described by 1829, when Jean Lobstein introduced the term Arteriosclerosis, reporting an abnormal formation in arterial walls. Later, in 1856, Rudolph Virchow suggested an arterial wall injury mechanism that […]

Obesity plays a central role in chronic noncommunicable diseases due to its high prevalence and strong correlation with risk factors like hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, and morbidity and mortality. In particular, abdominal obesity has been renowned as an emerging risk factor for an inflammatory and prothrombotic state, which is associated with an increased prevalence of hypertension and increased risk of cardiovascular (CV) events. These data are of utmost importance in the scenario of increasing prevalence of obesity not only in […]

Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ACVD) is common in the general population, affecting most adults over 60 years of age. The disease includes four main areas: (1) Coronary heart disease, (2) Cerebrovascular disease, (3) Peripheral arterial disease, and (4) Aortic atherosclerosis with aneurysms. The conditions traditionally associated with the installation of ACVD (the so-called “risk factors”) are dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, arterial hypertension, smoking, obesity, sedentary lifestyle and a family history of ACVD. Atherosclerotic vascular changes may begin in childhood, setting the stage […]