A study on vascular retinal alterations in patients with coronary artery disease

The paper describes the study carried out on a sample of 27 coronary artery disease patients of both sexes and with different agel aiming to determine a correlation between coronary artery disease and anomalies in the retinal circulation. Patients underwent selective coronary arteriography and fundus fluorescein angiography that allowed to investigate the dye dynamies and to detect abnormalities of time evolution, vessel walls and flux. In order to obtain a complete classifieation of the ischemie pathology of the retinal network we looked to the optic disc revolution, the papillo-macular network and the epi-peripapillar network. We have found a high evidence of abnormalities in all the examined sites; moreover we have observed a persistence of the dye in the ocular fundus longer than in people without coronary artery disease and we have found a correlation between the seriousness of the optie disc ischemia, c1assified in a numerical way, and the degree of the coronary artery disease. Hence the vascular abnormalities shown by the fluorescein angiography can constitute valid noninvasive markers and can advise further cardiologie tests for a coronary artery disease not yet diagnosed.