title: Cardiac allograft vasculopathy in adult human recipients: a case series of seven patients and review of literature.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Chronic rejection (CR) also called cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) is, besides infections and malignant tumors, the leading cause of death during the late period of post-heart transplant.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this paper, we present a series of seven cases with chronic post-transplant cardiac rejection in the light of our experience related to histopathological aspects, difficulties in diagnosing and survival time.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our study comprises patients whose ages ranked at the time of transplant between 33 and 58 years, with a mean age of 47.71 years, the ratio between men and women being 6:1. Chronic rejection - cardiac allograft vasculopathy occurred in all seven patients comprised in this study, the earliest in the second year post-transplant (three patients), followed by the third year (one patient), the seventh and eighth year (one patient) and the latest survival period being over 11 years (one patient). Four out of the seven patients with chronic rejection events were preceded by episodes of acute cellular rejection. The most convincing indirect evidence of chronic rejection in endomyocardial biopsies were: ischemic events of the myocardiocytes and impaired microvascular network because of perivascular and interstitial fibrosis.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study shows that the most important morphological factors correlated with the manifestation of chronic rejection were the episodes of acute cellular rejection or perivascular and interstitial fibrosis, these injuries also being indirect signs mainly detectable at the level of endomyocardial biopsies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Targu Mures, Romania. ovidiucotoi@yahoo.com
authors.forename: O S
authors.initials: OS
authors.lastname: Cotoi
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Suciu
authors.forename: Anca
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sin
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Turcu
authors.forename: S H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Morariu
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Szabolcs
authors.forename: Simona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stolnicu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017809:Fatal Outcome; D005260:Female; D005355:Fibrosis; D006084:Graft Rejection / Q000209:etiology* / Q000473:pathology; D016027:Heart Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged