[Cardiogenic shock due to acute mitral dysfunction after deep venous thrombosis]

Open surgical embolectomy may be life-saving in massive pulmonary embolism. Up to now there are no studies concerning the question whether the foramen ovale should be examined routinely during surgery and whether an open foramen ovale should be closed routinely in the same session. Even case reports regarding this question are missing. We report on a 74-year old female patient who developed pulmonary embolism due to deep venous thrombosis. Six days after successful surgical embolectomy the patient developed cardiogenic shock due to a huge thrombus from the right atrium through the foramen ovale into the left atrium and the left ventricle. Immediate surgical embolectomy of a 40-50 cm huge thrombus was successful. Immediately after surgery upon the cardiac mass the patient showed symptoms of acute right leg ischemia. Thus a second embolectomy was necessary, the surgeon removed a 10 cm thrombus from the right external iliacal artery. There was no evidence of another pulmonary embolism timely related to the paradoxical embolism.