Intersections between the coronary veins (CV) and arteries (CA) of 103 adult human hearts were mapped on the heart surface. Then the correlations of these intersection patterns to their localization were studied. Eight spots were selected where one of four major CV (anterior cardiac vein, middle cardiac vein, left posterior ventricular vein, and great cardiac vein) intersected with one of CA and their branches (right coronary artery, posterior interventricular branch, left posterior ventricular branch, circumflex branch, diagonal branch, and anterior interventricular branch). The great cardiac vein (GCV) ran beneath the anterior interventricular branch in 56 specimens out of 103, beneath the diagonal branch in 75 specimens out of 103, and beneath the circumflex branch in 36 specimens out of 103, while the other CV mostly ran over CA. The present observations suggest that the CV on the right side may be formed prior to CA, while the CV on the left side may be formed simultaneously with CA.
We have read with great interest the letter by Drs Loukas and Tubbs. We also thank them for providing information on current therapy for coronary vascular diseases (Loukas & Tubbs, 2008).As they said, it is important to know the diameter of veins and their relation to nearby arteries. But we did not include these data in our article. Rather, we concentrated on how coronary arteries and veins cross over each other over the entire heart. We believe that there may be some regularity in coronary venous circulation.As for the relationship between cardiac arteries and veins, we have already observed three specimens in which the great cardiac vein and the circumflex branch were twisted. We think it remains to be clarified how this pattern of crossing arose. Bergman et al. (1988), von Lüdinghausen (1989, and Kawashima et al. (2003) reported variations of the great cardiac vein. We also reported another variation of the great cardiac vein that ran through the right side of the left coronary artery and then drained into the left superior vena cava (Ishizawa et al., 2007).
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