Coronary Artery Spasm, Coronary Artery Thrombosis, and Myocardial Infarction

Excerpt

The paper by Herrick (1) linking coronary artery thrombosis to myocardial infarction had a profound impact on our understanding of the genesis of acute myocardial infarction. In fact, for a time the term coronary thrombosis was used interchangeably with acute myocardial infarction. This classical view, although applicable to many cases of myocardial infarction, does not explain all cases. It is now clear that coronary artery thrombosis is not universal in acute transmural myocardial infarction and is much less common in acute nontransmural myocardial infarction.

The extensive literature on the relation between coronary thrombosis and acute myocardial infarction (2-11) shows some