Microangiopathy (also known as microvascular disease, small vessel disease (SVD) or microvascular dysfunction) is a disease of the microvessels, small blood vessels in the microcirculation.[1] It can be contrasted to macroangiopathies such as atherosclerosis, where large and medium-sized arteries (e.g., aorta, carotid and coronary arteries) are primarily affected.[2]
| Microangiopathy | |
|---|---|
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| A case of conjunctival microangiopathy (red dashed-square) secondary to diabetes demonstrating a microaneurysm (orange arrow), vessel dilatation (blue arrows), and vascular tortuosity (yellow arrow). | |
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| Examples of microvascular diseases. |
Small vessel diseases (SVDs) affect primarily organs that receive significant portions of cardiac output such as the brain, the kidney, and the retina. Thus, SVDs are a major etiologic cause in debilitating conditions such as renal failure, blindness, lacunar infarcts, and dementia.[3]
- ^ "microangiopathy" at Dorland's Medical Dictionary
- ^ Kumar, Vinay; Abbas, Abul K.; Aster, Jon C.; Perkins, James A.; Robbins, Stanley L.; Cotran, Ramzi S. (2015). Robbins and Cotran pathologic basis of disease (Ninth ed.). Philadelphia, Pa: Elsevier; Saunders. ISBN 978-1-4557-2613-4.
- ^ Hakim, Antoine M. (24 September 2019). "Small Vessel Disease". Frontiers in Neurology. 10: 1020. doi:10.3389/fneur.2019.01020. ISSN 1664-2295. PMC 6768982. PMID 31616367.
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