Argentina’s Magazine of Cardiology
Vol. 78 No. 4
Calcification of the Left Ventricle
By: Gabriel Pérez Baztarrica, Fabio Sánchez, Rafael Porcile
The cardiac calcifications usually occur in the valves, sinus and atrioventricular nodes, coronary arteries, and on rare occasions, in the ventricular myocardium as a consequence of a prior heart attack. The latter are associated with complications which include heart failure, systemic embolism, and arrhythmia.
This is an exceptional case of a serious myocardium calcification associated with refractory heart failure to the medical treatment.
It involves a 58 year old patient with a history of past myocardial infarction which has developed into a necrosis dilated cardiomyopathy (a 10% ejection fraction of the left ventricle) with multiple placements due to heart failure. He is admitted to our center for another combination of refractory global heart failure to the medical treatment (inotropic and IABP). The anteroposterior chest radiograph, the tomography of the chest, and the coronary angiography (oblique right view) all show evidence of calcification of the thickness in the ventricle wall at anterior and lateral levels and at the edge of the heart (arrows below).
The patient has been referred to another center for an evaluation for a cardiac transplant.