Racial Differences in Patients with Coronary Vasomotion Disorders

Japanese physicians have made major contributions in this fi eld of coronary epicardial spasm 13, 14) . Compared with Caucasian variant angina, Japanese variant angina affect fewer female patients and exhibits less organic stenosis, less poor left ventricular function, less prior myocardial infarction, and good prognosis as shown in Table 1 13 - 18) . Under the optimal medications, Japanese variant angina had favorable clinical outcomes, whereas Caucasian variant angina did not have a benign prognosis in the clinic. The incidence of death without organic stenosis in Japanese variant angina is higher than that in Caucasian variant angina. We rarely experi-Review Racial differences regarding coronary vasomotion disorders between Caucasian and Japanese populations are controversial. In the past, coronary epicardial spasm was more often recognized in Japanese people than in Caucasian populations. In contrast, coronary microvascular dysfunction is typically observed in Caucasian patients. Japanese cardiologists perform spasm provocation testing actively in patients with unobstructive coronary artery disease, whereas Caucasian cardiologists except for those in some special institutions may skip coronary reactivity testing in the cardiac catheterization laboratory if they encounter patients with unobstructive coronary artery disease. In this review, we present the racial and ethnic disparities in the incidence and clinical characteristics between Caucasian and Japanese populations with coronary vasomotion disorders.