Acute multivessel coronary artery occlusion: a case report

BACKGROUND: In terms of clinical and angiographic findings, multiple simultaneous coronary occlusions in acute myocardial infarction are infrequent, and the mechanism of the occlusions is unclear. CASE PRESENTATION: We herein report a rare case of two simultaneously occluded coronary arteries, one of which subsequently underwent spontaneous lysis. An 88-year-old man had a 3-hour attack of acute crushing retrosternal chest pain. His first electrocardiogram showed ST-segment elevation in the inferior (II, III, and aVF) and anterior (V3–V6) leads. His second electrocardiogram in the cardiac care unit showed ST-segment elevation in the inferior leads but ST-segment depression in the anterior leads. Emergency coronary angiography revealed that the right coronary artery was acutely and totally occluded at the midportion and that the proximal and midportion of the left anterior descending coronary artery had an acute thrombus. According to his electrocardiogram and coronary angiography findings, we inferred that the right coronary artery and left anterior descending coronary artery first totally occluded simultaneously, and then the thrombus in the left anterior descending coronary artery spontaneously underwent partial lysis. Therefore, intervention of the right coronary artery was performed followed by injection of glycoprotein IIB-IIIA inhibitor into the left anterior descending coronary artery. He had an uneventful hospital course and was discharged home 10 days later. CONCLUSION: Because patients with multivessel coronary artery occlusion are often in serious condition, abnormal electrocardiographic results must be identified and affected vessel should be opened timely and efficiently to save the myocardium and reduce complications such as congestive heart failure.