A 45 yo male with a known history of MI presents with a few hours of chest burning, resolved now. Here is his presenting ECG:
This is classic Left Ventricular Aneurysm morphology, otherwise known as persistent ST elevation after old MI. There are QS-waves in V2-V4 (QS-wave is a single negative deflection without any R-wave), moderate ST elevation, T-waves are not tall and may be (as in this case) slightly negative.
"LV aneurysm" morphology is so-called because it is associated with an anatomic aneurysm about 80% of the time. It is quite common after a completed MI (formerly known as transmural MI), one in which the artery did not reperfuse, nor was the affected wall reperfused by collaterals, so the entire wall is infarcted, throught the full thinkness. Over time, the scar thins out and bulges outward in diastole (diastolic dyskinesis on echo). Before the reperfusion era, they were the most common reason for ST elevation STEMI mimic, but now they are much less common than before.
LV Aneurysm can be inferior, anterior, or posterior. I have never seen a lateral LVA, but I suppose they could exist. Inferior aneurysm looks very much like acute MI because it does not get QS-waves, but rather QR-waves, which can also be present in acute MI. I will post a case of inferior aneurysm soon, but here is one.
The chest pain with troponin elevation establishes this as a Non-STEMI. There is no need to activate the cath lab emergently. In his case, next day echo confirmed apical and anterior dyskinesis, and he underwent risk stratification with a nuclear stress test, which was normal, and he did not undergo cath. [This is perfectly appropriate conservative care for NSTEMI if the patient is discharged on maximal medical therapy (statins, beta blockers, aspirin, clopidogrel)].
Here is an old post from 2009 that describes LV aneurysm in detail, and describes an ECG rule I developed to help differentiate it from STEMI.
Here are all the cases I have posted on LV aneurysm.
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| There is ST elevation in precordial leads. What is the diagnosis? See below. The first troponin I returned positive at 0.467 ng/ml. |
This is classic Left Ventricular Aneurysm morphology, otherwise known as persistent ST elevation after old MI. There are QS-waves in V2-V4 (QS-wave is a single negative deflection without any R-wave), moderate ST elevation, T-waves are not tall and may be (as in this case) slightly negative.
"LV aneurysm" morphology is so-called because it is associated with an anatomic aneurysm about 80% of the time. It is quite common after a completed MI (formerly known as transmural MI), one in which the artery did not reperfuse, nor was the affected wall reperfused by collaterals, so the entire wall is infarcted, throught the full thinkness. Over time, the scar thins out and bulges outward in diastole (diastolic dyskinesis on echo). Before the reperfusion era, they were the most common reason for ST elevation STEMI mimic, but now they are much less common than before.
LV Aneurysm can be inferior, anterior, or posterior. I have never seen a lateral LVA, but I suppose they could exist. Inferior aneurysm looks very much like acute MI because it does not get QS-waves, but rather QR-waves, which can also be present in acute MI. I will post a case of inferior aneurysm soon, but here is one.
The chest pain with troponin elevation establishes this as a Non-STEMI. There is no need to activate the cath lab emergently. In his case, next day echo confirmed apical and anterior dyskinesis, and he underwent risk stratification with a nuclear stress test, which was normal, and he did not undergo cath. [This is perfectly appropriate conservative care for NSTEMI if the patient is discharged on maximal medical therapy (statins, beta blockers, aspirin, clopidogrel)].
Here is an old post from 2009 that describes LV aneurysm in detail, and describes an ECG rule I developed to help differentiate it from STEMI.
Here are all the cases I have posted on LV aneurysm.
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