Department of Internal Medicine, Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford Univesity School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA
Review Article
The Smoking Paradox: A Twist in the Tale of Vasospastic Angina
Author(s): Matthew V. Tran, Eric Marceau, Pei-Yu Lee, Mark Chandy and Ian Y. Chen*
Cigarette smoking is undoubtedly the single most important risk factor and trigger for vasospastic angina, a condition
also known as Prinzmetal angina secondary to coronary artery vasospasm. Even decades before vasospastic angina was
first described by Dr. Myron Prinzmetal and his colleagues in 1959, there had been suspected connections between
smoking and coronary artery vasospasm in what was alluded to then as “tobacco angina.” The intimate relationship
between smoking and vasospastic angina has since been extensively researched and validated through decades of
epidemiological and clinical studies. The fact that smoking would aggravate vasospastic angina comes with very little
surprise, as it has been shown to adversely impact many of the disease processes thought to underlie vasospastic
angina, including autonomic dysfunction, endothelial dysfunctio.. View more»