Traumatic Coronary Artery Dissection in a Young Woman after a Kick to Her Back

We present the case of a 38-year-old woman admitted to our outpatient clinic with accelerating back pain and fatigue following a kick to her back by her husband. Upon arrival, we detected ST segment elevation in the D1, aVL, and V2 leads and accelerated idioventricular rhythm. She had pallor and hypotension consistent with cardiogenic shock. We immediately performed coronary angiography and found a long dissection starting from the mid-left main coronary artery and progressing into the mid-left anterior descending (LAD) and circumflex arteries. She was then transferred to the operating room for surgery. A saphenous vein was grafted to the distal LAD. Since the patient was hypotensive under noradrenaline and dopamine infusions, she was transferred to the cardiovascular surgery intensive care unit on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenator and intra-aortic balloon pump. During follow-up, her blood pressure remained low, at approximately 60/40 mmHg, despite aggressive inotropic and mechanical support. On the second postoperative day, asystole and cardiovascular arrest quickly developed, and despite aggressive cardiopulmonary resuscitation, she died.

Surgical Extraction of an Embolized Atrial Septal Defect Occluder Device into Pulmonary Artery after Percutaneous Closure

An atrial septal defect is the most common type of congenital heart disease among adults. Surgical repair or percutaneous closure of the defect is the treatment options. Even though percutaneous closure seems to be less risky than surgical repair, it may result in fatal complications like device embolism, cardiac perforation and tamponade. Herein we report a case of the embolism of a device into the pulmonary artery after one hour of percutaneous closure in which the embolized device was surgically removed and the defect was closed with a pericardial patch.