الفهرس 
ENDOTHELIAL FUNCTION AND DYSFUNCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Cardiovascular disease is the single most common cause of death in the developed world and accounts for almost one million fatalities in the United States alone each year, of these cardiac deaths, nearly half result directly from coronary artery disease.
Coronary angiography has been the cornerstone in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD) for decades and is used to quantify significant prognostic information about epicardial coronary arteries. However, this technique is restricted to analyzing the lumen and does not assess the functional reactivity of the coronary arteries (i..e. endothelial function). Furthermore, angiography is invasive and may miss significant atherosclerosis that is present in the vessel wall before eventual encroachment on the lumen occurs. Therefore, the assessment of vessel function may yield additive prognostic information to that derived from standard coronary angiography only.
As coronary angiography is not feasible as a screening test. So many non-invasive tests were developed.
A majority of patients presenting for cardiovascular evaluation however, do not undergo invasive vascular testing.
One of those new techniques is assessment of the peripheral vascular endothelial function testing as a non-invasive indicator of coronary artery disease using brachial artery ultrasound.