ABSTRACT
Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the commonest cause of premature death in the developing world, the predominant underlying cause being atherosclerosis of coronary arteries. The disease is associated with many risk factors, including cigarette smoking, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, dyslipidaemia and family history. Coronary atherosclerosis is a chronic disease process with stable and unstable periods. During unstable periods a myocardial infarction (MI) may occur. ACS, an umbrella term used to describe acute complications of atherosclerosis of coronary arteries, has three clinical presentations:
n acute ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) also known as acute myocardial infarction – AMI (Grech and Ramsdale, 2003; Jones, 2003; Peters et al., 2007);
n unstable angina (UA); n non-ST segment elevation MI (NSTEMI).
