Prevalence of coronary artery anomalies in patients undergoing coronary artery angiography: a review of 16768 patients. A retrospective, single-center study.

AIM: Coronary artery anomalies (CAAs) most of the time are detected at birth. The aim of this study was to report the prevalence of CAAs by investigating coronary artery angiography (CAG) images of patients admitted to the authors' hospital, a tertiary healthcare provider. METHODS: Images of 16,768 patients who underwent CAG in our hospital were evaluated regarding CAAs. RESULTS: CAAs were detected in 120 (0.7%) cases. Anomalous origin and course of arteries were observed in 86 (0.51%) cases. Seven of these cases were diagnosed with acute coronary syndrome and 5 of them were treated with angioplasty without any complication. Absence of LMCA was revealed as the most frequent anomaly in the subgroup analysis of origin and course anomalies by being spotted in 59 (49.9 %) cases of total 120. Myocardial bridge, which constituted all intrinsic coronary anomalies in our study, was determined in 18 (0.1%) patients. All of the anomalies of coronary termination were coronary artery fistulas which were seen in 16 (0.09%) of patients and 2 of them were occluded with coil. CONCLUSION: Absence of LMCA was the most frequently encountered anomaly. Although CAAs are rare cases, they can cause difficulties in CAG interventions and surgical operations. This study presents CAA frequencies of patients who performed CAG.