Article history: Received: 04 Jun 2011 Revised: 07 Aug 2011 Accepted: 20 Aug 2011

Tako-Tsubo cardiomyopathy (TTC) is a reversible cardiomyopathy characterized by acute left ventricular segmental dysfunction, whose clinical presentation resembles that of acute myocardial infarction. The syndrome often follows a psychophysical stressful event and is characterized by echocardiographic evidence of akinesia of the left ventricular mid-apical segments. Atypical echocardiographic p...

Figure 1. Normal sized ventricle in diastole. In October 2010, a 64 year-old lady with history of well controlled hypertension, previous stroke with no residual weakness and psoriasis attended for a routine tooth extraction. This proved to be a complicated procedure, lasting over an hour, requiring repeated injections of prilocaine and felypressin and resulting in considerable distress to the p...

INTRODUCTION Tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy is a rapidly reversible form of acute heart failure triggered by stressful events that occur more frequently in postmenopausal women. A central role is supposed to be played by catecholamines and the association with pheocromocytoma is rare. CASE PRESENTATION We describe a patient admitted for abdominal pain and suffering of hypertension pharmacologicall...

A 57 year-old woman with no history of cardiac disease presented to the emergency department with confusion and seizures secondary to alcohol withdrawal. Elevated troponin levels and an electrocardiogram demonstrating global T-wave inversions prompted coronary angiography, which revealed coronary vessels free of significant disease. An echocardiogram showed both hypokinesis of the left-ventricu...

1990 by Satoh et al.1 This syndrome of transient left ventricular dysfunction in response to severe emotional stress or illness occurs in the setting of normal epicardial coronary arteries. Patients are most commonly females without prior history of cardiac disease. The syndrome consists of chest pain, EKG abnormalities and elevation of cardiac markers. The resulting left ventricular dysfunctio...

A 22-year-old male smoker with no other cardiovascular risk factors presented within the first hours after a successful appendicectomy with severe acute chest pain accompanied by nausea. An ECG showed ST-segment elevation in leads I, VL, V2V4 and concurrent ST-depression in leads II, III, VF (Fig. 1). He was immediately transferred to the CCU where chest pain was relieved after nitrate therapy....