Small vessel disease and intracoronary plaque composition: a single centre cross-sectional observational study

Abstract

Cardiac events are commonly triggered by rupture of intracoronary plaque. Many studies have suggested that retinal small vessel abnormalities predict cardiac events. The present study examined retinal microvascular abnormalities associated with intracoronary plaque. This was a single centre cross-sectional observational study of consecutive subjects who underwent coronary angiography and intracoronary optical coherence tomography (OCT) of occlusive coronary artery disease. Subjects’ retinal images were deidentified and graded for microvascular retinopathy (Wong and Mitchell classification), and vessel calibre using a semiautomated method based on Knudtson’s modification of the Parr Hubbard f..