Coronary Artery Disease

Diagram showing a build up of plaque in a coronary artery and coronary artery disease.

Diagram showing a build up of plaque in a coronary artery and coronary artery disease.

What is coronary artery disease?

The coronary arteries are small but important arteries that supply blood to your heart. Coronary artery disease happens when your coronary arteries get narrower when fatty material (plaque) builds up inside them. This reduces the blood flow to the heart and is usually the underlying cause of a heart attack. 

A heart attack happens when a blood clot seriously reduces and completely blocks the flow of blood to the heart muscle. If you’ve ever had a heart attack, you have coronary artery disease. 

What causes coronary artery disease?

The process of plaque building up inside your arteries is called atherosclerosis. This can start when you are young and may be well advanced by middle age. Your risk of developing coronary artery disease increases as you get older.  Other risk factors that increase your chance of developing coronary artery disease include high LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, family history, diabetes, smoking, being post-menopausal for women and being older than 45 for men. Obesity may also be a risk factor.

What are the symptoms of coronary artery disease?

Most people have some level of plaque in their arteries. Stable plaque is generally not harmful however when it narrows the arteries too much it can affect the flow of blood to your heart. Often people don’t know they have coronary artery disease until they experience the first sign of pain and discomfort called angina. Angina needs to be treated.

In other cases, unstable plaque forms that is inflamed and fattier. While it may not severely narrow the artery, it can develop surface cracks, exposing the contents of the plaque to the blood. When blood cells try to seal the gap in the surface with a blood clot, the clot can partially or completely block the coronary artery, stopping the flow of blood to the heart.

How you do diagnose coronary artery disease?

If you’re worried about coronary artery disease, talk to your doctor about your risks. A range of tests are available to check your heart health, including:  

How you do treat coronary artery disease?

While there’s no cure for coronary artery disease, there are lots of things you can do to help. You may need to make some lifestyle changes to stop your heart disease getting worse or take medications to manage some of the other risk factors of a heart attack, like high blood pressure or high cholesterol. 

If your coronary artery disease is causing serious heart problems, we may suggest a procedure like angioplasty, stent implantation or coronary artery bypass graft surgery to improve your symptoms and reduce the risk of more problems in the long term.