Recent animal studies and clinical trials have reported the scope of heart-resident ckit-positive stem cells in regenerating infarcted myocardium. The determinants of successful isolation of such cells are unknown. The objective of this study was to determine the influence of risk factors for coronary artery disease and disease severity on the successful isolation of ckit-positive cells from right atrial tissue of patients with coronary artery disease. The findings suggest that coronary artery disease and cardiac remodeling in chronic ischemia may not affect the yield of ckit-positive cells from atrial tissue, but a significant negative correlation between the age of the patient and the number of migrated ckit-positive cells was observed. This suggests that in older patients, stem cell isolation from cardiac biopsies may not succeed, and such cells may not be available for cell therapy.