Healed Plaques in Patients With Stable Angina Pectoris

OBJECTIVE:Healed plaques, signs of previous plaque destabilization, are frequently found in the coronary arteries. Healed plaques can now be diagnosed in living patients. We investigated the prevalence, angiographic, and optical coherence tomography features of healed plaques in patients with stable angina pectoris. APPROACH AND RESULTS:Patients with stable angina pectoris who had undergone optical coherence tomography imaging were included. Healed plaques were defined as plaques with one or more signal-rich layers of different optical density. Patients were divided into 2 groups based on layered or nonlayered phenotype at the culprit lesion. Among 163 patients, 87 (53.4%) had layered culprit plaque. Patients with layered culprit plaque had more multivessel disease (62.1% versus 44.7%, P=0.027) and more angiographically complex culprit lesions (64.4% versus 35.5%, P