Presentation of a case with Wellens syndrome

Abstract

This case report is about a 56-year-old male, farm worker with a history of being a smoker and suffering from high blood pressure, who was admitted at the Cardiology Care Department with the diagnosis of coronary artery disease –unstable angina–, because of chest pain related to physical effort and changes in the appearance threshold. Rest-electrocardiogram, painless, shows deep, symmetric negative T waves in anterior wall, without enzyme elevation; but during admission the patient evolves quickly, clinically and electrically, to an extensive anterior wall acute myocardial infarction, without responding to the fibrinolytic reperfusion therapy, and showing a ventricular tachycardia degenerating into ventricular fibrillation. There was no response to the maneuvers of cardiovascular resuscitation, thus, he dies. It is diagnosed postmortem as a Wellens syndrome, because necropsy showed severe atherosclerotic disease of the proximal segment of the left anterior descending coronary artery with extensive anterior transmural infarction.