High-risk coronary atheroma: the interplay between ischemia, plaque burden, and disease progression.

Necropsy studies have outlined the morphological characteristics of high-risk, or "vulnerable," coronary plaque segments, demonstrating the presence of inflammatory infiltrate and various compositional elements in patients who succumbed to fatal intracoronary thrombosis. However, accumulating evidence in vivo relates the overall burden of atherosclerosis, its rate of progression, and its subsequent ischemic potential with the risk for incident clinical events. These observations, coupled with the efficacy of contemporary medical therapies in reducing clinical event rates, have important implications for trial design of future human in vivo evaluations of vulnerable coronary plaque.