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This 3757-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. Despite appropriate care she developed an intractable arrhythmia and could not be resuscitated.

== Autopsy Findings ==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 and an acute thrombus in the left anterior descending. The lungs showed pulmonary edema and early bronchopneumonia.

File:IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction1IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction1b.jpg|This is a gross photograph of a heart with areas of old healed myocardial infarction (scars) outlined by arrows. File:IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction2IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction2b.jpg|This is a low-power photomicrograph of a healed myocardial infarction with a fibrous scar. Remaining normal tissue is on the left right (1) and the fibrous connective tissue scar is on the right left (2). File:IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction3IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction3b.jpg|This is a higher-power photomicrograph of a the healed myocardial infarction with a fibrous scar. Remaining The normal tissue is at on the top right (1) and the fibrous connective tissue scar is at on the bottom upper left (2). Note the presence of occasional hypereosinophilic myocytes indicating recent acute ischemic injury to this region of old scar tissue (arrows). File:IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction4IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction4b.jpg|This is another higha higher-power photomicrograph of a healed myocardial infarctionwith a fibrous scar. Note Remaining normal tissue is at the remaining normal myocytes right (1), and the fibrous connective tissue scar is at the left (2), and . Note the presence of occasional hypereosinophilic myocytes (arrows) indicating recent acute ischemic injury (arrow)to this region of old scar tissue. File:IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction5IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction5bs.jpg|This is a low-power photomicrograph of two sections of myocardial tissue stained with a trichrome stain to demonstrate fibrous connective tissue (blue-green). The section on shows the left is from a heart with a recent myocardial infarction. Notice the absence of mature fibrous connective tissue. The section on the right is from a this heart with an old healed infarct and it contains extensive fibrous connective tissue scars. File:IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction6.jpg|This is a photomicrograph of a trichrome-stained section from a heart with an acute Some viable myocardial infarction. Note that there is little fibrous connective tissue. It is too early for scar formation to have taken place in this acute lesionremains (arrows). File:IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction7IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction6bs.jpg|This is a photomicrograph of a trichrome-stained section of heart containing an old healed myocardial infarction. The scar is composed of mature fibrous connective tissue (arrowsblue-green) and some remaining viable myocytes (red). File:IPLab3HealedMyocardialInfarction8.jpg|This is a higher-power photomicrograph A small focus of a trichrome-stained section of heart containing an old healed MI. The adipose tissue can be seen in the scar tissue (mature fibrous connective tissuearrow) is stained blue.

* [http://peir.path.uab.edu{{SERVER}}/library/index.php?/tags/43-myocardial_infarct PEIR Digital Library: Myocardial Infarct Images]

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