The objective of this study was to compare four procedures for Chlamydia pneumoniae DNA extraction from vascular tissue. The NucliSens Kit, the QIAamp tissue DNA MiniKit, buffer-saturated phenol and the Geneclean II Kit were evaluated, based on the yield of recovered DNA, using PCR to detect C. pneumoniae in vascular tissue. The QIAamp tissue procedure had the highest detection level (0.004 inclusion-forming units/sample). All methods, except NucliSens (70 min), had a short handling time (30-40 min). Costs varied from 0.5 to 3.2 Euro.