[Clinicopathological study of the causes of mortality during the acute phase of myocardial infarction (author's transl)]

Abstract

Clinical and autopsy study of 100 cases of patients dying during the first 3 weeks of hospitalisation for myocardial infarction revealed the following causes of death: cardiac failure in 59 cases (including 40 of cardiogenic shock), rupture of the heart in 29 cases (24 of rupture of the ventricular wall, 4 of the septum and 1 of a mitral papillary muscle). 4 ventricular arrhythmias and 6 haemorrhagic or embolic complications. In 2 cases, the cause of death could not be accurately determined. In cardiogenic shock, death usually occurred early. It was later in cases of refractory left ventricular failure. Conduction disturbances were much commoner in cases of myocardial infarction complicated by fatal cardiac failure (57.6%) than in the presence of any other complication (17.1%) (p less than 0.001). The responsible infarction was often extensive and recurrent. Rupture of the heart invariably occurred during the first three days of an infarction often initial (p less than 0.001), anterior (apart from septal rupture) and small in size (p less than 0.01). Other complications play only a secondary role in mortality at the present time, in particular arrhythmias, the gravity of which has greatly decreased since the reduction of delays before hospitalisation and improvements in anti-arrhythmic therapy.