Acute myocardial infarction caused by a septic coronary embolism diagnosed and treated with a thrombectomy catheter

Abstract

Acute myocardial infarctions are common in bacteraemia but are seldom diagnosed during life. A 64 year old man with severe chest pain who had fever for several days due to possible bacteraemia was shown by ECG and echocardiography to have possible lateral infarction. Immediate coronary angiography showed possible thrombus in the left circumflex artery, which was treated by thrombectomy catheter. Bacterial thrombus was removed and was verified by histological examination. A stent was implanted without complications. Acute myocardial infarction caused by septic embolism is usually fatal; however, thrombectomy may be useful in these cases. P erera et al 1 described a fatal case of acute myocardial infarction that arose from embolism of bacterial vegetation. Thromboembolic complications including myocardial infarction are common in patients with bacteraemia with or without endocarditis, but acute myocardial infarctions are seldom diagnosed during life. Recently, thrombectomy catheters have been used to treat acute myocardial infarctions in clinical settings. 3 We report a case of acute myocardial infarction caused by bacterial embolism in a major epicardial artery, diagnosed and treated with a RESCUE thrombectomy catheter (Scimed/BSC, Natick, Massachusetts, USA).A 64 year old man with chest pain was referred to the Division of Cardiology from the Division of Nephrology in our hospital. He had been receiving haemodialysis for 10 years and one month previously had undergone femoral-popliteal artery bypass surgery because of arteriosclerosis obliterans. After surgery, he remained in the Division of Nephrology for haemodialysis and rehabilitation. Owing to occlusion of the dialysis shunt, a transient dialysis catheter was inserted into his jugular vein one week before the onset of chest pain. He consequently developed a fever and thus the catheter was removed three days later. On the day of severe chest pain (two days after removal of the catheter) he was febrile, an ECG showed ST segment depression in leads I, II, III, aVF, and V 3 to V 6 , and echocardiography showed lateral wall motion abnormality but no findings indicating infective endocarditis. Urgent coronary angiography showed almost abrupt occlusion of the proximal left circumflex coronary artery caused by possible thrombus ( fig 1A). We immediately performed coronary aspiration with a RESCUE thrombectomy catheter ( fig 1B) and as a result a large amount of material was collected. After aspiration, we performed balloon angioplasty and implanted a stent, which achieved successful reperfusion (TIMI (thrombolysis in myocardial infarction) flow grade 3 4 ). The maximum creatine kinase concentration was 880 IU/l and the patient was treated with antibiotics and anticoagulants.The material collected by the RESCUE catheter measured 2 mm. Histological findings were Gram positive streptococcus in a fibrin thrombus (fig 2). We feared that implanting the stent without aspiration might have caused a mycotic coronary aneurysm at the location of stent implantation. 6The mecha...

Prevalence, Clinical Features, and Prognosis of Acute Myocardial Infarction Attributable to Coronary Artery Embolism

“…2 In the era of primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for AMI, thrombectomy devices are increasingly used and histological examination of the aspirated thrombus provides additional information for diagnosing CE. 3 Because the majority of previous reports describing the clinical characteristics of CE were case reports with a small number of patients, [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] with the largest series to date consisting of 55 patients in an autopsy study 2 and 14 patients with probable CE in the clinical setting, 16 a mechanistic study for this important cause of AMI is now warranted.…”

Coronary Emboli in a Young Patient with Mechanical Aortic Valve: A Rare Cause of Acute Myocardial Infarction

“…Treatment options include intravenous or intracoronary thrombolytic therapy, percutaneous catheter aspiration embolectomy followed in some cases by balloon angioplasty with or without stenting, and medical management with anti-coagulants and IIb-IIIa inhibitors (8-11). Taniike et al reported a case of non-STEMI caused by bacterial embolism in proximal LCX that was treated with manual thrombectomy and stenting (12). Yuce et al reported another case of non-STEMI as a result of thromboembolism in distal RCA in a patient with prosthetic mitral valve thrombosis.…”

Successful thrombectomy for coronary embolism likely due to floating aortic plaque in ascending aorta

“…Histological examination of the retrieved material in this case revealed severe calcified atherosclerotic plaque without thrombotic components. Several reports demonstrated a free-floating thrombus in ascending aorta [6], and bacterial thrombi [7] were rare coronary emboli sources. However, there are no reports which demonstrated calcified aortic plaque caused coronary emboli as this case.…”