In-Stent Restenosis and Remote Coronary Lesion Progression Are Coupled in Cardiac Transplant Vasculopathy But Not in Native Coronary Artery Disease
Michael Jonas, MD*, , ,*,
James C. Fang, MD*,
John C. Wang, MD*,
Satyendra Giri, MD*,
Dan Elian, MD ,
Yedael Har-Zahav, MD ,
Hung Ly, MD*,
Philip A. Seifert, MS ,
Jeffrey J. Popma, MD* and
Campbell Rogers, MD*,
* Cardiovascular Division, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
Heart Institute, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel
HarvardMIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts

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Figure 1 Cumulative frequency of minimal luminal diameters (MLDs). The cumulative frequency distribution curve of MLDs of: (A) stented segment, immediately after stent implantation and at follow-up; (B) reference, non-stented segment at baseline and at follow-up angiogram.
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Figure 2 Scatter plot shows correlation between in-stent late loss and non-intervened, reference segment late loss: (A) heart transplant patients and (B) native atherosclerosis patients. For each individual post-transplant patient, in-stent late lumen loss was closely coupled to late lumen loss of the individual matched non-intervened segment, in both the Sheba Medical Center and Brigham and Womens Hospital (BWH) patient populations. In contrast, no such coupling of in-stent and reference vessel late loss was found in native atherosclerosis patients.
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Figure 3 Stenting and follow-up angiograms of Case 1: (A) angiogram showing significant stenosis of the ramus intermedius (arrow) and minimal irregularities of the reference left anterior descending artery segment (arrowhead); (B) post-stent angiogram showing good angiographic result after deployment of a bare-metal stent (arrow); (C) repeat angiogram, 6 months after stenting, showing focal in-stent restenosis of the ramus (arrow) with significant disease progression in the non-intervened mid- and distal portions of the left anterior descending artery (arrowhead).
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Figure 4 Photomicrographs show: (A) Ramus intermedius stent; (B) non-intervened, diagonal branch of Case 1 patient. 1) Verhoeff tissue elastin stain, 2) Carstairs fibrin stain, and 3) Sirius red collagen stain demonstrate: in A, severe in-stent restenosis and in B, diffuse cardiac allograft vasculopathy with similar-appearing intimal thickening consisting of fibrotic, collagen-rich, hypocellular matrix with adventitial thickening and fibrosis in both the stented and the non-intervened artery. 4) Immunohistochemical CD-68 staining (positive reaction color is brown) showing macrophage infiltration in both stented segment neointima (A) and non-intervened allograft vasculopathy (B). Photomicrographs (Verhoeff tissue elastin stain) of the circumflex artery stent (C) and non-intervened, marginal branch (D) of Case 2, and high-power view of the in-stent restenosis neointima (C); both in-stent restenosis and marginal branch transplant vasculopathy demonstrate similar fibrotic hypocellular neointima proliferation.
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