Introduction:

Coronary ectasia has a low prevalence in the general population. Its risk factors may differ from those of coronary artery disease.

Objective:

To identify the prevalence of coronary ectasia in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and cardiovascular risk factors (CVRFs).

Methods:

Retrospective, cross-sectional study. Out of 3,254 cardiac catheterizations for AMI during one year, 2,975 had no coronary ectasia. We included 558 patients with coronary ectasia on coronary angiography and, as controls, subjects with similar characteristics except for coronary ectasia, and CVRFs were recorded. Descriptive statistics, bivariate and multivariate analysis were used; odds ratio (OR) was calculated.

Results:

279 patients with and without coronary ectasia were studied. The prevalence of coronary ectasia was 8.5%. The platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR) was higher in patients with ectasia than in those without ectasia (p = 0.003). In the bivariate analysis, associated CVRFs were overweight, obesity and diabetes, and in the multivariate analysis, hypercholesterolemia (OR: 3.90; p = 0.0001) and exposure to herbicides (OR: 6.82; p = 0.020).

Conclusions:

A high prevalence of coronary ectasia was found, with the main risk factors being a history of herbicide use and hypercholesterolemia. PLR was found to be elevated in these patients. Early detection is important due to its association with acute coronary events.