IPLab:Lab 3:Healed Myocardial Infarction

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Clinical Summary[edit]

This 37-year-old white female with a 22 year history of insulin-dependent diabetes was admitted to the hospital 10 hours prior to death complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath. Three months before, she had begun to experience progressive weakness and for the previous 3 weeks she noticed increasing dyspnea on exertion and worsening of a chronic cough.

Autopsy Findings[edit]

Autopsy showed a 340-gram heart with extensive transmural reddish discoloration of the anterolateral portion of the myocardium of the left ventricle. There was severe atherosclerotic narrowing of all coronary arteries especially the left anterior descending. The lungs showed pulmonary edema and early bronchopneumonia.

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Related IPLab Cases[edit]

Shortness of breath is a common clinical manifestation of heart failure.

A normal heart weighs 300 grams (range: 270 to 360 grams).

Atherosclerosis is the deposition of lipid into the intima of arteries, resulting in narrowing of the vessel lumen.

Pulmonary edema refers to the accumulation of fluid in the pulmonary alveolar and tissue spaces as a result of changes in capillary permeability and/or increases in capillary hydrostatic pressure.

Myocardial infarction is necrosis of myocardial tissue which occurs as a result of a deprivation of blood supply, and thus oxygen, to the heart tissue. Blockage of blood supply to the myocardium is caused by occlusion of a coronary artery.

An occlusion is a blockage.

An infiltrate is an accumulation of cells in the lung parenchyma--this is a sign of pneumonia.

A normal partial thromboplastin time is 28 to 37 seconds.