ABSTRACT
Neointimal hyperplasia mainly develops within several months of coronary stent deployment, after which it stabilizes. Although it was widely accepted, particularly during the bare-metal stent (BMS) era, that in-stent restenosis (ISR) generally does not present as an acute coronary syndrome (ACS), but rather as a gradual recurrence of angina symptoms, recent data have shown that a substantial number of patients with ISR present as ACS. There has also been consistent postmortem evidence of plaque rupture secondary to atherosclerotic change within the neointima of a BMS. We report here a case of ACS in which intravascular ultrasound and optical coherent tomographic assessments revealed neointimal atherosclerotic change and ruptured plaque 10 years after BMS deployment.