Stress cardiomyopathy is a reversible left ventricular dysfunction precipitated by emotional stress. Affected patients are generally women, whose symptoms are similar to myocardial infarction with reversible apical dyskinesis associated with hypercontractile basal segments and no evidence for hemodynamically significant coronary arterial stenoses by angiography. We report the case of an 82-year-old woman who presented with acute onset of chest pain after emotional stress and with reversible left ventricular dysfunction consisting of akinesis of the midventricular segments and hyperkinesis of the basal and apical segments.
Stress cardiomyopathy is a reversible left ventricular dysfunction triggered by emotional stress. We describe a variant of transient left ventricular ballooning in a patient in which basal and midventricular segments are affected. This confirms that there is not just one ventricular dysfunction pattern in Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. The involvement of only the basal and midventricle segments is an intriguing observation with no clear explanation; furthermore, there are no predictive factors for the differently sited wall motion abnormalities.
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