[Idiopathic aneurysms of the coronary arteries]

Abstract

Two cases of multiple coronary aneurysms are reported in patients aged 15 and 25 years. The clinical presentation in both cases was myocardial infarction. The diagnosis was confirmed by the demonstration of rounded calcification at the border of the aneurysms on chest X-Ray, and multiple aneurysmal dilatations on selective coronary angiography. These two cases and the other 16 found in the medical litterature allow analysis of the clinical signs of idiopathic coronary aneurysms, generally these of acute coronary insufficiency. Two-dimensional echocardiography seems to be the most effective means of detecting this type of pathology. The incidence of coronary aneurysms during infantile periarteritis nodosa, and in Kawasaki's syndrome, very similar conditions affecting infants and children, suggest that these two diseases may play a role in the formation of coronary aneurysms in adolescents and young adults, which would therefore be sequellae of an inflammatory arteritis of childhood.