After his first acute myocardial infarction, a 69-year-old male suffered the usually lethal complication of ventricular free-wall rupture. Early suspicion of possible rupture and immediate percutaneous insertion of an intraaortic balloon pump assist device afforded sufficient hemodynamic stability to proceed with cardiac catheterization. The diagnosis of ventricular free-wall rupture was confir...

A 43-year-old man collapsed suddenly, with pericardial tamponade, seven weeks after an inferior myocardial infarction. Pericardiocentesis disclosed very heavily blood stained fluid. Left ventricular angiography 10 days later showed a left ventricular aneurysm. At operation a left ventricular false aneurysm was resected and the patient recovered uneventfully.

Cardiac rupture during stress testing is uncommon and rarely reported, with less than ten cases described in the scientific literature. We present a patient with left ventricular free wall rupture one week after a nontransmural acute myocardial infarction (AMI), when undergoing conventional stress testing. A 70-year-old man, ex-smoker, with no other cardiovascular risk factors, was admitted in ...

Left ventricular pseudoaneurysm is a rare and lethal condition associated with a high risk of rapid enlargement and rupture. It develops after transmural myocardial infarction (MI), cardiac surgery, trauma, or infection. When a left ventricular pseudoaneurysm is detected, surgical repair is recommended due to the high possibility of rupture. In this report, we present surgical treatment of a gi...

Intraoperative cerebral aneurysmal re-bleeding has a deleterious effect that is associated with high mortality and morbidity. Neurosurgeons and anesthesiologists should be familiar with all methods including hypothermia, cardiopulmonary bypass, pharmacologically-induced hypotension and cardiac standstill to manage intraoperative aneurysmal rupture or clip complex aneurysms. Specifically, adenos...

The 10-20% incidence of cardiac rupture in acute fatal myocardial infarction has not changed in the past century, and little is known about its pathophysiology. To determine whether expansion acute dilatation and thinning of the area of infarction not explained by resorption of necrotic tissue may be a variable predictive for rupture, we studied 110 consecutive autopsied patients who died of ac...

A 65 year-old woman was admitted to our hospital, because of unconsciousness after chest and back pain. Echocardiography showed pericardial effusion. She suffered from pre-shock due to cardiac tamponade. Although a cause of cardiac tamponade was unclear, we performed emergency surgical treatment without coronary angiography. In operation, we found a rupture of coronary arteriovenous fistula and...