What is angina and what causes it?
Angina is a pain that comes from the heart. The usual cause of angina is narrowing of one or more of your coronary arteries. This reduces the blood supply to a part or parts of your heart muscle. The blood supply may be enough when you are resting. However, your heart muscle needs more blood and oxygen when it works harder. For example, when you walk fast or climb stairs, your heart rate increases to deliver the extra blood. If the extra blood that your heart needs during exertion cannot get past the narrowed arteries, the heart ‘complains’ with pain. The narrowing of the arteries is caused by atheroma. Atheroma is like fatty patches or ‘plaques’ that develop within the inside lining of arteries. (This is similar to water pipes that get ‘furred up’ with scale.) Plaques of atheroma may gradually form over a number of years in one or more places in the coronary arteries. In time, these can become bigger and cause enough narrowing of one or more of the arteries to cause symptoms. The diag
