Coronary vasospasm in ischemic heart disease appears to result from a dynamic interaction between preexisting atherosclerosis and normal smooth-muscle shortening.
Patients with angina, myocardial infarction, and sudden death almost always have demonstrable coronary atherosclerosis. Furthermore, there is mounting evidence that coronary artery "spasm" is a contributing feature of these different coronary ischemic syndromes. Using quantitative angiography and two modes of alpha-adrenergic stimulation in patients with spontaneous most angina, vasomotor hyperreactivity was shown to be localized only to the region of a preexisting coronary atheroma. These observations support the hypothesis that a dynamic interaction between the histopathologic features of coronary atherosclerosis and "normal" amounts of coronary smooth-muscle shortening accounts for the clinical features in the great majority of cases in the spectrum of ischemic heart disease. There are stenosis, each with different therapeutic implications.
B. Greg Brown (1981) studied this question.