Left Ventricular Rupture in a Patient with Coexisting Right Ventricular Infarction

Abstract

CARDIAC rupture, although usually an acute catastrophic event, may be subacute, so that diagnosis and surgical treatment of cardiac tamponade and the underlying myocardial tear is possible.1 2 3 The diagnosis of cardiac tamponade depends on clinical and hemodynamic evaluation. Although the clinical presentation of hypotension, distended neck veins, and pulsus paradoxus is characteristic of tamponade,4 these findings may also be present in right ventricular infarction.5 , 6 Equalization of right atrial and pulmonary capillary wedge pressures may occur in right ventricular infarction as well as cardiac tamponade, thus making differentiation difficult. In a recent series, 4 of 12 patients with right ventricular infarction . . .