Background:
Coronary arteries are the main vessels supplying the heart. Various factors can affect their performance, which causes coronary diseases and impaired blood supply and irreparable complications. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the most common cardiovascular diseases with the highest mortality rate and disability among patients. Atherosclerosis is the most common cause of CAD. The objective of this study is to investigate the epidemiological and anatomical characteristics of the atherosclerotic plaques in coronary arteries and their risk factors in Mazandaran Heart Center. Method: This cross-sectional study with a census design performed on all patients with atherosclerotic plaque, who undergone atherectomy surgery, from November 2009 to January 2019. Patient‟s information was extracted from their medical records archive with ethical points including age, gender, biochemical and pathology test results. SPSS 16.0 was used for statistical analysis using Chi-squared, Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Mann-Whitney tests. The significant lever for P-value was set at 0.05.Result: Out of 156 patients with atherosclerotic plaque, 60.9% were male. The mean age of patients was 61.58± 8.9 years. The mean level of Fasting Blood Sugar (FBS), Triglycerides (TG), Total Cholesterol (TC), High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL), Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) were respectively 153, 151, 165, 37, 94 (mg/dl). The most incidence of atherosclerotic plaques was seen in 50-80 age category. Atherosclerotic plaques were mostly found in the right coronary (RCA) (53.8%) followed by left anterior descending (LAD) (41%) arteries, which was more common in men. The coronary calcification in lad arteries was more than RCA arteries. In most cases, calcification of LAD and RCA artery was patchy (37.5 %) and massive (38%) respectively. No significant relationship was observed between sex, age, the number of arteries involved and level of biochemical variables.Conclusion: We found that FBS, TG, TC, HDL, and LDL do not have significant effect on this disease. It is recommended to check more factors in further studies and specific factors may even effect on this disease in different regions due to race. Hence, it seems that in Mazandaran province, other potential factors such as stress, lifestyle, etc. may play the main roles. On the other hand, it is reasonable to emphasize the impress of prevention and control.