Medical Image of the Month: Severe Left Ventricular Hypertrophy

Abstract

No abstract available. Article truncated after 150 words. The patient is a 56-year-old man with a history of hypertension who was admitted to ICU after the administration of nitroglycerin for chest pain in the setting of hypertensive emergency resulted in a sudden drop in systolic BP drop from 220 to 106. The above images depict severe concentric LVH (End-diastolic-wall-thickness = 22mm) with significant apical and septal thickening resulting in partial obstruction of the left ventricle outflow tract concerning for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) vs hypertensive heart disease (HHD). Significant morphological overlap between HCM and HHD makes establishing a diagnosis difficult and often requires more advanced tissue characterization in the form of cardiac MR. In a patient with severe LVH, a diagnosis of HCM should be considered if ≥ 1 myocardial segment has a LV end-diastolic wall thickness (EDWT) ≥ 15mm on transthoracic echo (1). Additional features such as systolic anterior motion of the mitral valve (SAM) are also useful …

Keywords

• left ventricular hypertrophy
• hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
• echocardiogram
• ultrasound
• point of contact
• treatment
• alcohol septal ablation
• septal myomectomy
• electrocardiogram
• diagnosis