Do you experience frequent chest pain (angina) but have been told that you have normal (or non-obstructed) coronary arteries? Cardiology experts are standing by at Memorial Cardiac and Vascular Institute ready to diagnose this cardiac condition.

“There is a type of heart disease affecting the tiny (micro) arteries in your heart, unlike more familiar types of heart disease, which affect the larger arteries, and this disease is known as coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD),” said Jonathan Roberts, MD, Medical Director, Clinical Research and Education, Interventional Cardiology Program Director, Memorial Healthcare System. “Not many Cath Labs are set up to diagnose this important problem, but we are experts at doing this at Memorial.”

People with CMD experience frequent chest pain, also called angina, during normal daily activities like shopping, cooking and going to work, but the underlying cause of their chest pain is different from that caused by more common types of heart disease. Traditional test, such as an angiogram, are only able to detect problems with the large arteries and not designed to detect issues within tiny heart arteries. However, in patients with CMD, the walls of these tiny coronary arteries are damaged or diseased, reducing flow of blood to the heart muscle and resulting in the symptoms of chest pain.

While there are some treatments to help patients manage this disease, MCVI now has joined a national research study that is looking at investigational cell therapy as a potential treatment to reduce or resolve chest pain in the population of patients who have this disease. MCVI is the only cardiac institute in Florida that is part of the FREEDOM Trial.