A 43 years old patient came to the Emergency Department of our hospital for a cardiology visit. The EKG revealed polymorfic ventricular tachycardia with a heart rate of 160 bpm so that he was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.
In 2005, he had a post traumatic myocardial infarction after a car accident treated with the implantation of one drug eluted stent on the descending artery. Three years later, a single-chamber ICD was placed.
On admission in Intensive Care Unit, cardiac auscultation revealed normal heart sounds without murmurs. No lower extremity edema was observed. A transthoracic echocardiogram showed general hypokinesis with reduced global left ventricle systolic function and no pericardial effusion (EF=20%).
The patient was haemodynamically stable, the blood pressure was of 130/80 mmHg. The device was also interrogated and it showed six ineffective attempts of antitachycardia pacing. After that, the patient was given an effective intracavitary shock. Moreover, the patient underwent coronary angiography which showed no disease progression and patency of the stent previously implanted on the proximal descending artery.
The electrophysiological study was performed and subsequently 3 ventricular ectopic focuses were effectively ablated. Multiple DC shocks were delivered during the procedure and the atrioventricular bundle was damaged. In consideration of the clinical features and the left ventricular reduced ejection fraction, an indication to the implantation of CRT-D was given.
Conclusions: this case report describes a rare complication of a blunt chest trauma. A young patient with no significant past medical history suffered a dissection of the coronary descending artery resulting in ST-elevation myocardial infarction. The mechanism of coronary occlusion following blunt chest injury may be due to: shear force applied to the coronary arteries leading to intraluminal thrombosis; vascular rupture; embolism to the coronary arteries; fissuring of an atherosclerotic plaque with dislodgment of plaque material; vascular spasm at the site of the injury. Anyway, severe left ventricular dysfunction caused the developing of polymorfic ventricular tachycardia which was unresponsive to medical treatment and was treated with ablation.
