[Comment] From coronary artery disease to atherosclerotic coronary artery disease: what is in a name?

Atherosclerosis starts early in life, progresses with age, with lesions distributed across the vasculature, including coronaries, and is responsible for adverse cardiac events, such as myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death. The major thrust of current diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for coronary artery disease has overwhelmingly focused on late-stage atherosclerosis—ie, obstructive coronary artery disease—and its consequent clinical signature, inducible ischaemia. Significantly, obstructive coronary lesions found in patients dying of myocardial infarction led to the seemingly logical conclusion that fixing luminal stenosis would prevent events.