A Case of Left Ventricular Thrombophilia after Anterior Wall Acute Myocardial Infarction

In acute myocardial infarction, mural thrombi occur in approximately 20 per cent of patients who do not receive anticoagulant therapy and about 10 percent of thrombi result in systemic embolization. Threrfore, in acute phase of myocardial infarction, heparinization is considered as essential therapeutic regimen which afterwards acute phase, might have no clinical significance. We experienced a patient with recurrent LV apical thrombi inspite of an sufficient anticoagulation. This patient was treated with primary balloon PTCA and optimal duration of anticoa-gulation with IV heparin was maintained. At predischarge follow-up, TTE revealed huge LV apical thrombi and warfarinization was started. Three episodes of appearance and disappearance of thrombi have been noted and we report this patient as thrombophilia associated with acute myocardial infarction.

Ischemic Stroke After Acute Myocardial Infarction

BACKGROUND: The relationship between the anterior site of acute myocardial infarction(MI) and occurrence of stroke has become a recent subject of much debate in the relevant literature. The object of this study was to examine the incidence of ischemic stroke during the hospitalization after an acute MI and to identify predictors of MI-related stroke. METHOD: We performed retrospective analysis of 452 patients with acute MI admitted to department of Neurology or Cardiology from January 1990 to August 1997. Patients with a stroke during hospitalization after acute MI were recruited for this study. RESULT: Thirteen cases were recorded. Seventy-seven percent (10/13) of the strokes occurred within 4 days after onset of MI. Multivariate analysis identified the following as independent predictors of stroke : History of hypertension(OR. 2.6: CI, 1.1 to 5.9), previous stroke(OR, 22.3: CI, 5.9 to 84.9) and congestive heart failure (CHF)(OR, 15.4: CI, 2.2-108.6). Transthoracic echocardiography(TTE) was performed in 349/452(77%) during hospitalization. The incidence of left ventricular thrombosis(LVT) in patients with anterior MI who received thrombolytic and anticoagulant therapy was not significantly different from that in patients with anterior MI who didn't(2.6% vs 6.1%, p=0.265). Stroke developed in only one of these patients with LVT. Thrombolytic and anticoagulant therapy were more frequently used in patients without stroke compared with stroke.(p<0.05). CONCLUSION: The incidence of stroke after acute MI is 2.9% and more frequent within the 4 days after MI. History of hypertension, previous stroke and congestive heart failure (CHF) were the factors independently favoring the occurrence of stroke, but there is no relation between the occurrence of stroke and anterior site of MI. Although intravenous thrombolytics followed by full anticoagulation treatment appeared to provide protection against ischemic stroke, it has no effect in the incidence of left ventricular thrombi in this study.