Dear Colleagues,

Coronary artery spasm (CAS), an intense vasoconstriction of coronary arteries that causes total or subtotal vessel occlusion, plays an important role in myocardial ischemic syndromes including stable and unstable angina, acute myocardial infarction, and sudden cardiac death. Coronary angiography with provocative testing is currently the only method of diagnosing CAS. While CAS is often missed because of its infrequent incidence and the dilemma involved in its diagnosis, CAS occurs in about 13% of patients after stent implantation. As a result, CAS is not a standalone phenomenon, and is surely related to the procedures of percutaneous coronary intervention.

While the mechanisms underlying the development of CAS are still poorly understood, CAS appears to be a multifactorial disease but is not associated with the traditional risk factors for obstructive coronary artery disease. Given the substantial morbidity and mortality associated with CAS, there is a growing interest in invasive and non-invasive interventions that might improve the diagnosis and outcomes of CAS.

In this Special Issue, we aim to update the available and emerging strategies for the management of CAS. Specifically, we invite authors to submit manuscripts pertaining to the current and emerging mechanisms, and the potential related targets for future therapy. These issues welcome both original research papers and review articles.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

1. Pathophysiology of CAS, including but not limited to risk factors, precipitating factors, and potential mechanisms;
2. Diagnosis of CAS by the present and future multimodality imaging;
3. Epidemiology of CAS regarding geographic and racial heterogeneity;
4. Medical treatment for CAS, including current medication treatment review and potential therapeutic targets;
5. Invasive treatment for CAS, including percutaneous coronary intervention;
6. Genetic predisposition to CAS, including results from genome-wide association studies.

Prof. Dr. Ming-Yow Hung
Prof. Dr. Nicholas G Kounis
Guest Editors

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• coronary artery spasm
• inflammation
• risk factors for coronary spasm
• provocative tests for coronary spasm
• managements for coronary spasm