Nornal and diseased vascular pattern of myocardium of human heart. II. Pattern seen with fibrosis of the left ventricular free wall.

This paper reports the vascular abnormalities that may be found in areas of fibrosis or infarction in the left ventricle of the human heart.The obser- vations are based on a study which was carried out to establish the variation in the vascular pattern in the myocardium of the ventricles of a series of nor- mal and diseased human heartst.There is little published about the vascular chan- ges that occur in areas of myocardial fibrosis or in- farction in the left ventricle of the human heart, and it is obvious that a greater knowledge of the micro- vasculature is required not only to correlate the site, size, and extent of infarction with the location and degree of coronary artery obstruction, but also to provide a satisfactory explanation as to why some patients have long survivals with no incapacity fol- lowing a myocardial infarction.Furthermore, a more complete understanding of the variation of the normal pattern of the vessels in normal and diseased myocardium will almost certainly be needed to interpret coronary arteriograms as greater magnifi- cation of these x-rays is produced. MATERIAL AM METHODDetails of the hearts studied, the use of Chromopaque to inject the coronary arteries, and the technique of tak- ing microradiographs of transverse ventricular myo- cardial slices on Kodak high resolution plates, and the gross and microscopical examination of each heart have already been outlined (Farrer-Brown, 1968a, b).