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(Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 2004;24:2408.)
© 2004 American Heart Association, Inc.

Atherosclerosis and Lipoproteins

Intimal Thickness Is not Associated With Wall Shear Stress Patterns in the Human Right Coronary Artery

Anil K. Joshi; Richard L. Leask; Jerry G. Myers; Matadial Ojha; Jagdish Butany; C. Ross Ethier

From the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (A.K.J., C.R.E.) and Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (A.K.J., M.O., C.R.E.), University of Toronto, Ontario; the Department of Chemical Engineering (R.L.L.), McGill University, Montreal, Quebec; John H. Glenn Research Center (J.G.M.), National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Brookpark, Ohio; and the Department of Pathology (J.B.), University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario.

Correspondence to C. Ross Ethier, PhD, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, 5 King’s College Road, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8 Canada. E-mail ethier{at}mie.utoronto.ca

Objective— Low wall shear stress has been implicated in atherogenesis throughout the arterial tree, including the right coronary artery (RCA). The objective of this study was to determine the level of covariation of intimal thickness and wall shear stress in the human RCA.

Methods and Results— Postmortem histological measurements of intimal thickness were compared with wall shear stresses calculated from computational flow modeling in 4 human right coronary arteries. A statistically significant correlation between intimal thickness and wall shear stress was found in only 1 of the 4 arteries studied.

Conclusion— Wall shear stress does not appear to be related to intimal thickness in the 4 RCAs studied.

To determine whether low wall shear stress causes intimal thickening in the human right coronary artery, we compared postmortem histological data with computed wall shear stresses in 4 patients. We found no consistent correlation between intimal thickness and wall shear stress.

Key Words: hemodynamics • intimal thickening • right coronary artery • wall shear stress • computational modeling

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