Autopsy Studies in Atherosclerosis II. Distribution and Severity of Atherosclerosis in Patients Dying with Morphologic Evidence of Atherosclerotic Catastrophe

THIS is the second of a series of reports on a study that was performed to observe the distribution and severity of atherosclero-sis in the major arteries of 500 consecutive adults dying in a general hospital. The first report ' dealt with atherosclerosis in the 347 patients from this group who died without morphologic evidence of atherosclerotic ca-tastrophe in the heart, aorta, or brain. The present paper describes the atherosclerosis in 153 patients in this group who died with morphologic evidence of atherosclerotic ca-tastrophe. The third report2 deals with the distribution and severity of atherosclerosis in patients from this study dying with obes-ity, hypertension, nephrosclerosis, and rheu-matic heart disease. METHODS AND PROCEDURES Description of the subjects included in this study, and the methods employed in collecting and ana-lyzing the data are detailed in the preceding paper. ' Figures 1 to 9 are the group "atheroscle-rosis profiles " of the various patients with athero-sclerotic catastrophes; below each atherosclerosis profile are recorded the sites which were studied statistically. The vessels are listed across the tops of the atherosclerosis profiles. In the preceding paper, the "noncatastrophic" patients were subdivided into age groups and the distribution and severity of atherosclerosis in the various arteries discussed. Unfortunately, the ca-tastrophic groups are of insufficient size for analy-sis by decades