Transcatheter closure and prognosis of coronary artery fistulae in heart transplant recipients

Introduction

Coronary artery fistulae (CAF) represent an abnormal communication bypassing the myocardial capillary bed between a coronary artery and either a cardiac chamber (coronary-cameral CAF) or a vascular structure from systemic or pulmonary circulation (coronary-vascular CAF). CAF represent a congenital anomaly in 0.2% of the population, but are more frequently found in heart transplant recipients (8%), mostly as coronary-right ventricle (RV) CAF caused by endomyocardial biopsy used for monitoring of rejection1,2. Other complications of myocardial biopsy include perforation of the RV wall and tricuspid valve damage2. Several case reports have shown successful transcatheter closure of CAF3,4. We aimed to analyse ...