Anomalous origin of a coronary artery in a transplanted heart.

Upon routine coronary angiography one year after surgery in a 62-year-old male recipient of a heart transplant, an abnormal origin of the left anterior descending coronary artery from the pulmonary artery was found in the donor heart. This very rare congenital anomaly had not been detected during harvesting and transplantation of the heart, and to our knowledge it has never been described before in a heart transplant patient. The donor was a 43-year-old male who died of a spontaneous intracranial bleeding. The recipient continues to enjoy a normal functional capacity and is free of anginal complaints, though there is evidence of ischaemia in the left anterior descending artery territory on exercise thallium-201 myocardial perfusion imaging.