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Case #42

It is late and your pager goes off. It is your next admission. Your colleague tells you "this is an easy one, come down". You come down and the patient is being admitted for a rule out MI admission. You speak to her and she tells you that she came in because of a chest pain she woke up with this morning. She says it is across her entire chest, and is in both arms. It gets worst when she gets up to do anything, and if she sits still she feels fine. She says for the past 2 months after every large meal she gets a similar type of pain which she takes tums for which help. She says since than she eats smaller meals which has made a little difference. She also tells you for the first time she ate a large burrito last night from one of the corner shops and the cereal she ate this morning also made the pain worst. She also tells you that she lives in georgia and is here visiting, and her and her husband have covered an entire city on foot with no problems, and that she is an avid hiker. She denies any SOB, Dizziness, Palpitations, Diaphoresis. She denies any change in exercise tolerance. Her only past medical history is High Cholesterol for which she takes Lipitor. She does not smoke, does not drink, and has no contributory family history. Her Chest xray is clear, and her labs are pending. She is asking you if she can leave? Her EKG is below, what do you do?

Click Here for better Quality Image of EKG

 

Based on her story which sounds really good for GERD and her EKG which is really unremarkable, except for the few findings, the likelihood for Acute Coronary Syndrome was very low. The labs were all back except for her troponin. Here CK MB was negative.

She wants to leave, however the ER doctor convinces her to stay for 24 hour observation or at least until the troponin comes back. You call the lab to get the troponin results, and they tell you that there is a delay in the troponins because of a problem with the machine. SHe decides to stay.

About four hours later her troponin comes back positive at 5! She was started on heparin, ASA, Beta Blocker. The repeat and serial troponins kept trending upward and peaked at 25. She went for cath the next morning and turned out to have Triple Vessel Disease and went on to have Coronary Artery Bi pass Surgery! So much for the soft rule out.