ABSTRACT
Cardiovascular diseases remain the chief cause of death in the world and atherosclerosis is the principal cause of myocardial and cerebral infarction and accounts for the majority of these deaths. Atherosclerosis of the coronary artery is a major cause of sudden and unexpected death but the incidence of this disease would be different according to geographic area. Our main goal in this study was to evaluate coronary artery disease especially atherosclerosis in the region and compare the results with those of the literature. We examined the hearts of 100 consecutive forensic pathology cases which were referred from medicolegal center to the pathology department of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Age of the patients was between 12 to 79 years, and most of them were in the young and middle age groups [75%]. In young, middle and old age groups the incidence of normal coronary artery was 52.5%,18 and 4.8% respectively. Incidence of more than 75% narrowing of coronary arteries in young, middle and old age groups was 0, 25% and 43% respectively and it shows that the incidence of coronary disease is increased with age. Frequency of atheromatous lesion and critical narrowing [more than 75%] according to vessel was as following: Artery. Atheromatous lesion. Critical narrowing. Left anterior descending 56% 35%. Right coronary 51% 27.5%. Left circumflex 49% 25%. According to the above-mentioned findings, frequency and severity of atheromatous lesions were most commonly present in the left anterior descending, right coronary and left circumflex arteries in descending order. Calcification with atherosclerotic lesion was not present with narrowing of less than 25%, but if the narrowing was more than 75% its frequency was between 66 to 100%. The most interesting finding was absence of myocardial infarction with more than 75% narrowing and single, double and triple vessel involvement