Cardiac magnetic resonance detection and typical appearance of microvascular obstruction following myocardial...

We report the case of a 58-year-old man with a recent anterior myocardial infarction, for which he did not receive prompt reperfusion therapy. The patient underwent cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging, for the assessment of left ventricular function and myocardial viability, and coronary angiography, two weeks after the acute cardiac event. The CMR study demonstrated a moderately dilated left ventricle, with impaired systolic function and wall motion abnormalities in the anterior, apical and inferior left ventricular walls. The T1-weighted images obtained early after contrast administration demonstrated a dark rim in the endocardial region of the interventricular septum and apex. The delayed-enhanced images demonstrated complete absence of signal at the same rim, adjacent to a hyper-enhanced region that corresponded to the wall motion abnormalities. These findings are suggestive of microvascular obstruction in the distribution of the left anterior descending coronary artery. Microvascular obstruction has been reported to correlate positively with the size of the infarction and the left ventricular end-diastolic volume, and inversely with the left ventricular ejection fraction. Furthermore, it has been reported as an independent predictor of future major cardiovascular events. Microvascular obstruction should be routinely checked for in patients presenting in the peri-myocardial infarction period for CMR assessment of myocardial viability.